CHRISTIAN MORALITY; 



SERIES OF DISCOURSES 



ON THE 



DECALOGUE. 



BY JOHN W. CHICK ER ING 3 

Pastor of High-Street Church, Portland, Maine = 



BOSTON: 

CROCKER & BREWSTER, 
47 Washington-Street. 

1839. 



3 V4 6.5 5. 
•C 5 



Entered according to an Act of Congress ; in the year 1839 ; by 

CROCKER & BREWSTER, 
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 




TO THE 

HIGH-STREET CONGREGATION, 
PORTLAND^ ME., 

THESE DISCOURSES, 

ORIGINALLY PREPARED FOR THEIR BENEFIT, 

A.VD NOW PUBLISHED AT THEIR REQUEST, 

ARE AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,. 
BY THEIR PASTOR, 



PREFACE, 



It is a common and ingenious device of the 
Enemy of God and man, to dissociate piety 
and morality. When, either in the views, or 
in the practice, of any community, such a 
separation takes place, the consequences are 
most disastrous. Nor is the evil diminished bv 
the fact, that piety and morality are, in truth, 
inseparable. Indeed it would be difficult to 
say, whether piety without morality, or morality 
without piety, involves the greater perversion 
of terms, and the greater injury to the Church 
of God. 

Is there no danger that in our just dread of 
the latter, — a danger which the practical ten- 



vi 



PREFACE. 



dencies, and the unreflecting habits of the 
times may well awaken, — we should guard 
with too little care against the former ? While 
contemplation is becoming more and more 
unfashionable, and its place poorly supplied by 
incessant action, — the watchword of the day, — 
have we no cause to fear that morality will be 
postponed to both, and that the grace of a pure 
and holy life, even in the Church, will lan- 
guish ? 

So, at least, it has seemed to me. And I 
confess the pleasure with which I learned that 
these discourses, of all my recent public minis- 
trations, had awakened an interest so deeu 
among all classes of my hearers, as to demand 
their publication. 

That demand, with whatever reluctance, and 
even serious inconvenience, on account of ill 
health, it has been complied with, I did not feel 
at liberty to resist. 

In such a light do I view the claims of 
Christian morality upon the Church of God, 
and such evils, both past and imminent, are 



PREFACE. 



Vll 



seen even within her sacred enclosures, — evils 
both to herself and to the world whose light 
she ought to be, — from neglect, both as to in- 
struction and practice, concerning these great 
matters of right doing, as the fruit and evidence 
of right feeling, that I was quite willing to pre- 
sent my church and congregation, if they de- 
sired, some such offering, and, through them, the 
christian community at large, with this, rather 
than any other portion of my public discourses. 

When I reflect upon the vast amount of 
doctrinal discussion respecting the great point 
of evangelical faith, which the various errors 
of the age have called forth, I cannot doubt 
that the time has come for more full instruction, 
and more frequent exhortation, concerning the 
equally "Weighty matters of the Law." 

An evil day will it be for the cause of evan- 
gelical truth, when its adherents shall be truly 
charged with having a less strict regard for 
morality, than those who substitute it in the 
place of piety. All things "pure, and lovely, 
and of good report," should abound in the lives 



Till 



PREFACE. 



of those who profess to be joined to Christ. 
There ought to be no just ground of unfavorable 
comparison, or of saying, " what do ye more 
than others," against those who see in the 
sufferings of the incarnate word, a vicarious 
endurance for their transgressions. 

To this end, it is needful that the church 
should have "line upon line, precept upon pre- 
cept ; " and that all the branches of christian 
morality, even down to those " minor moralities 
of life," which are rather the ornaments than 
the elements of a "godly conversation," should 
receive timely attention both from the Pulpit 
and from the Press. 

It is not so much in the hope of supplying 
the lack of books on these subjects, among the 
numerous publications of the present day, as of 
turning attention towards that deficiency and 
its probable consequences, that this volume is 
sent forth. It comprises, necessarily, only an 
outline of Christian morality. Not a series of 
sermons only, but of volumes, is needed to do jus- 
tice to the subject, and to be a guide to the con- 



PREFACE. 



ix 



science and the practice both of tire Church 
and the world. It were much to be desired 
that the suggestion respecting an extended trea- 
tise on the eighth commandment, which will be 
found at page 193 of this volume should be 
noticed and followed by some competent writer. 
The same remark will apply to several of the 
other commandments. 

In saying further, that these discourses were 
hastily prepared, and delivered in the ordinary 
course of pulpit labor, on an equal number of 
successive Sabbaths, without the remotest 
thought of publication, it is not intended to 
shield them from criticism, or to apologize for 
their literary imperfection. When a writer 
voluntarily appears as an author, he assumes 
not only the labors, but the responsibilities, of 
authorship ; and he has no claims to exemption 
from that criticism, which he might have 
avoided by the simple expedient of keeping his 
manuscript to himself. 

These Sermons retain their original form, their 
variety in the mode of discussion, their personal 



X 



PREFACE, 



addresses, and most of their local allusions. 
Had it been otherwise, they would have failed 
to meet the wishes of those, whose kind and 
urgent request has led to their publication. 
They desired to read what they had been in- 
terested in hearing ; and not something else, so 
modified as to have lost its identity with their 
recollections. The discourses, therefore, are 
presented to the public as originally delivered, 
with such slight revision as the haste in which 
they were written rendered necessary, 

The closing sermon, following those upon the 
commandments, sufficiently explains the reason 
for its insertion according to the request of the 
hearers. The Law and the Gospel should 
never be far asunder in the thoughts of the 
Christian or in the instructions of the sanctuary. 
Indeed, whatever the Law may do in this life, 
even for those who have broken it, by restrain- 
ing them from the lengths to which they might 
go in transgression it is plain that it is only as 
"our schoolmaster, to bring us to Christ " that 
it can do us any good for the life which is to 



PREFACE, 



come. To preach the Law without the Gos- 
pel, is a thankless and useless task. Together, 
they furnish a noble theme, worthy of the 
beneficial results which God has connected 
with their due and proper presentation. 

If the volume should be honored, by the 
Great Head of the Church as a humble instru- 
ment in promoting that obedience to the Law, 
and that faith in the Gospel, which together 
form the Christian character and lay the foun- 
dation of the Christian hope, it will gratify the 
highest wishes of 

The Author, 

Portland, September, 1839. 



SERMONS. 



CONTEXTS, 



PAGE. 

SERMON I.— The First Commandment.— Thou shah have 
no other gods before me. — Exodus 20 : 3. .... 15 

SERMON II.— The Second Commandment.— Thou shah 
not make unto thee any graven Image or any likeness of any 
thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or 
that is in the water under the earth : thou shalt not bow down 
thyself to them ; nor serve them 5 for I the Lord thy God am a 
jealous God ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the child- 
ren unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me ; 
and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and 
keep my commandments. — Exodus 20:4 — 6. . . . . 33 

SERMON III.— The Third Commandment.— Thou shah not 
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain 5 for the Lord will 
not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. — Exodus 
20 : 7 55 

SERMON IV.— The Fourth Commandment. — Remember 
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor, 
and do all thy work : but the seventh day is the sabbath of the 
Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy 
son, nor thy daughter, thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, 
nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates : for in 
six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all 
that in them is, and rested the seventh day : wherefore the Lord 
blessed the sabbath-day, and hallowed it.— Exodus 20 : 8—11. . 73 



xiv 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON V.— The Fifth Commandment.— -Honor thy fa- 
ther and thy mother ; that thy days may be long upon the land 
which the Lord thy God giveth thee.— Exodus 20 : 12. . . 109 

SERMON VI.— The Sixth Commandment.— Thou shaltnot 

kill.— Exodus 20 : 13. . . 131 

SERMON VII.— The Seventh Commandment.— Thou shalt 

not commit adultery.— Exodus 20 : 14 153 

SERMON VIII.— The Eighth Commandment.— Thou shalt 

not steal.— Exodus 20 : 15 173 

SERMON IX.— The Ninth Commandment.— Thou shalt 
not bear false witness against thy neighbor. — Exodus 20: 16. 195 

SERMON X.— The Tenth Commandment.—TIiou shaltnot 
covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's 
wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor 
his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's. — Exodus 20 : 17. . 215 

SERMON XI.— The Law and the Gospel.— For what the 
law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God 
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin 
condemned sin in the flesh j that the righteousness of the law 
might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after 
the Spirit.— Romans 8 : 3, 4 235 



SERMON I. 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT 

EXODUS 20 : 3. 
THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME, 

This is the first commandment. As I have 
lately discoursed upon the nature of Christian 
morality in general, I now propose to specify 
the various duties it includes, as brought to 
view in the decalogue. The present discourse, 
therefore, is the first of a series, which may be 
expected at convenient intervals, on each of 
the ten Commandments, in their order. 

The history of this early and comprehensive 
statute book is familiar to you all. It was first 
engraven upon stone, by which mode of publi- 
cation, — a species of lithography in a moral as 
well as literal sense, — was set forth the eternal 
2 



14 



SERMON I. 



and unchangeable nature of the divine com- 
mands. 

Nor was this all. When Moses, in his holy 
indignation, excited by the strange idolatry of 
the Israelitish multitude, had thrown down and 
destroyed the original copy of this heavenly 
imprint, God commanded him to prepare other 
tables of stone, like unto the first, saying, " I 
will write upon these tables the words that were 
in the first tables, which thou brakest." The 
precise amount of that whole memorable revel- 
ation upon Sinai, which God saw fit in this 
formal and reiterated manner to perpetuate, is 
made known to us in a succeeding passage, 
where we are told, that " He wrote upon the 
tables the words of the covenant, the Ten 
Commandments." 

These, then, as separate from the rules that 
followed them and related chiefly to the ex- 
ternals of the Jewish religion, are to be re- 
garded as the grand outline of Jehovah's moral 
requisitions. They form what is commonly 
styled the Moral Law, in distinction from the 
ceremonial law, which last, though it w 7 as so 
strongly binding upon those to whom it was 
given, that their transgression of it was deemed 
by God a high and punishable immorality, was 
yet temporary and in a sense arbitrary, not 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT, 



15 



entering into the details, nor founded directly 
and necessarily upon the basis, of the great 
eternal principles of moral rectitude. They 
were matters of duty with the Jews only, be- 
cause God commanded them; though He had 
great moral reasons unrevealed, like royal rea- 
sons of state, for ordaining them. Not so with 
the Ten Commandments. They are mere it- 
erations or copies of the law of conscience, as 
the fifth, the sixth, and the ninth, or like the 
second and the fourth, have an intimate con- 
nexion with the rendering of spiritual service 
to the Great Object of religious worship. 

Such is the Decalogue ; wonderful and in- 
teresting in every point of view ; as a fragment 
of antiquity; as the first record of the legisla- 
tion of the Great Legislator ; as comprehend- 
ing all morality ; and as showing every reflect- 
ing man that he must plead guilty to the charge 
of having in more ways than one disobeyed his 
Maker. A young person was once heard to say, 
that whatever else she had done that was wrong, 
she had certainly never broken any of the Ten 
Commandments. Perhaps, with a full and 
spiritual understanding even of the First, we 
may find reason to be more cautious in our self- 
justification. 



16 



SERMON I. 



" Thou shalt have no other gods before me. 9 * 
This English phrase might mean that no other 
gods should be held in higher estimation ; re- 
quiring only that Jehovah should be supreme. 
But the original word rendered " before," sim- 
ply refers to Jehovah's universal presence and 
inspection. Mark, too, the mode of address. 
The singular number is used, It is not "ye," 
but " thou," directed to each hearer and reader 
individually, as though he were alone in the 
world ; 64 Thou shalt never insult Me by hav- 
ing any pretended deity in my sight as an ob- 
ject of thy reverence." Let us hear God thus 
personally addressing us, not only in this, but 
in all the Commandments. 

The first commandment is not directed 
against idolatry, strictly so called, that is, the 
use of images or other visible forms as objects 
or instruments of worship. For as the true 
God might be worshipped through those for- 
bidden idols or other forms, so the first com- 
mandment may be broken without the use of 
any such instruments of devotion, and even 
without the formal adoption by name or other- 
wise of any false divinity as an object of reli- 
gious homage. 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 



17 



It would hardly be the most profitable mode 
of treating this subject, to entertain you, — and 
the history is certainly not uninteresting, though 
painful,— with an account of the false theology 
of the world. " Lords many and gods many " 
have indeed had dominion, nominally, and in a 
sense really, over this world which Jehovah 
created and of which He is Sovereign Ruler. 

But we must first settle the question what it 
is to have other gods than Jehovah ; in other 
words, in what way men, whether heathens, 
or dwellers in Christendom, are in danger of 
breaking the first commandment. The cele- 
brated invocation of the Poet, 

Father of all ! in every age, 

In every clime adored, 
By saint, by savage, and by sage, 

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, 

implies that all who recognize any divinity, un- 
der whatever name, and possessed of whatever 
character, do in fact render allegiance to the 
Creator and Ruler of the universe. 

But is this true ? I readily admit that the 
mere name of his divinity is nothing, either for 
or against the claims of a man to be considered 
a worshipper of the true God. It is nothing in 
our favor, if ours is an imaginary deity of a to- 



18 



SERMON I. 



tally different character from the scripture char- 
acter of God, that we call him by the scripture 
name. It would be nothing against the Pagan 
who should reverence and obey the true God 
so far as the light of nature had revealed his 
character and his will, that he applied to him 
some unauthorized designation. 

But was the Jove of the ancients, or is any 
one of the legion-named divinities of the mod- 
ern pagans, the true and universal Lord ? Is 
the being whom any of them ignorantly worship, 
the nearest possible approximation, with the 
light they have, to the scripture portraiture of 
the great God, holy, wise, just and good ? Far, 
far from it ; as I need not take pains to show. 
The researches of modern philanthropy, to- 
gether with the records of ancient mythology, 
have not left it doubtful that the gods of the 
heathen are literally, as the Bible assures us, 
" vanity and a lie." It is known to almost 
every child, that many of them rather resemble 
demons than divinities ; and that in the Jupiter, 
and Venus, and Bacchus, and Mercury, to whom 
the most splendid temples of antiquity were 
dedicated, and whose names are interwoven 
with the most imperishable literature the world 
has ever seen, we find impersonated and deified 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 



19 



the meanest and most malignant passions of the 
human heart. So that even the heathens are 
without excuse, because when they knew God, 
that is, might have known Him by the light of 
nature, they glorified Him not as God. They 
had " other gods before Him." Let it be dis- 
tinctly understood then, that when we charge 
the pagan world, both ancient and modern, 
with being worshippers of false gods, we do 
not mean merely that they use a different name 
from the Bible name, nor merely that they have 
more gods than one, — for I think we can im- 
agine an unenlightened mind to have a view of 
the true God under various names, correspond- 
ing w T ith his various attributes, not amounting 
to polytheism in its worst sense, — but we 
charge them with worshipping-a different being 
from the true God, different, too, as to those 
points of character, which the light within 
would have made clear to their minds, if they 
had used that light to the best of their ability. 
It was on this account that the apostle de- 
clared them to be without excuse. 

But there is yet another question. What is 
a god ? What must we think, or feel, or do, 
in order to a recognition of any divinity, wheth- 
er true or false ? I answer, a god is something 



20 



SERMON I. 



more than a creator. We might call our crea- 
tor by a certain name, and invest him with 
certain attributes, and those very exalted ones, 
and yet he might not be our god. For we 
might suppose some other being as our pre- 
server, that is, the god of providence, — in which 
case the first would be at the best only a creat- 
ing god, — or we might suppose still another to 
be our moral governor, or we might wholly ex- 
clude the idea of a moral government, — in which 
case we should be in an important sense with- 
out any god at all, for creation and providence, 
mighty works as they are, form but a very small 
part of the entire office of the Divinity. 

Our God then, must be something more than 
our creator, our preserver, or the architect of 
the universe. He is our God, whom we rev- 
erence, love and obey ; just as he is our king 
for whom we have feelings and words and acts 
of allegiance. The banished monarch, whom 
his enemies called the pretender, was all the 
while the king of those, who desired his restor- 
ation. He occupied the throne of their hearts; 
and God, we are told, " looketh on the heart." 
It is here he will have his throne. 

While, therefore, it is nothing against the 
pagan that he has, ignorantly, a wrong name 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 21 



for his divinity, it is nothing in our favor, neces- 
sarily, that we have the right name, or even 
some of the true attributes of Jehovah on our 
lips, or in our view, unless He is in truth our 
God, reverenced, loved, worshipped and obey- 
ed as such. 

This it is, then, to have other gods before 
Jehovah : To have other objects, whether they 
be persons, or things, or fictions of the imagin- 
ation, as objects of the affection and obedience 
which we owe to God. We need no other 
confirmation of such a view, than is furnished 
by the language of Christ, who in summing up 
the purport of all the divine statutes, includes 
this and a few others under the head of loving 
the Lord our God with all the heart and soul 
and mind and strength. 

And now let us leave the pagan world, and 
come home to our own firesides, with the hon- 
est and humble inquiry, whether in any way, ac- 
cording to the spiritual principle of our Saviour's 
commentaries upon some of the commandments, 
we have ever broken this first one, What sods 
have we in Christendom besides Jehovah ? I 
answer, 

I. An imaginary being — rather many imag- 
inary beings — bearing the same name, but dif- 



22 



SERMON I. 



fering, widely and essentially, from the true 
God. In speaking of the heathen, I have said 
that the grounds of their inexcusableness as sta- 
ted by the apostle, are, their not knowing the 
true God as well as they might by the light 
they possessed, and their not glorifying him as 
they were taught by the light within to do. 

If the same rule holds true in our ease, — and 
it is so reasonable that I think we shall all ad- 
mit it to be the only one on which God can be 
supposed to proceed in estimating our conduct 
in this matter, — we have only to ask what means 
of knowing him He has placed within our 
reach, in order to ascertain to what extent a 
mistake in our theology is blameworthy. 

The reply to this question is very plain. We 
have every possible means of knowing who 
God is, and what he requires. We have a rev- 
elation clothed with such authority, marked 
with so many tokens of its truth and heavenly 
origin, as never clustered around any other 
volume even as to the simple questions of its 
authorship and general credibility. 

This volume, too, in addition to direct asser- 
tions concerning the character of Jehovah, — 
many of them from his own lips and all given 
by his inspiration, — contains his laws, his deal- 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 



23 



ings with individuals and nations, and to some 
extent, with angels both fallen and unfallen, 
many of his plans for the future, and a full, though 
necessarily a figurative, description of the grand 
assize which will terminate in a flood of glory 
his earthly administration. With all this, in 
addition to that light of nature which of itself 
rendered the heathen without excuse, does not 
God justly demand of us, that we should ac- 
knowledge, adore and obey him in an intelli- 
gent manner, and without confusion or error as 
the grand leading traits of his .character. 

Let none imagine that the end of all this ar- 
gument is to be this : some men in christian 
lands, break the first commandment, because 
some men believe in a god different from the 
One whom the preacher finds revealed to his 
mind on the pages of inspiration. No, I will 
draw no such conclusion. I only say, that if 
you will look abroad upon the face of Christen- 
dom, or even of New-England, nay, of any con- 
siderable tow r n, or village, you will see cause to 
conclude that some men, among such diverse 
theology, must have an imaginary god. 

The remark of one distinguished man to 
another of a different faith, " We do not be- 
lieve in the same God," — though the language 
is strong and its spirit liable to be misunder- 



24 



SERMON I. 



stood, was nevertheless true. How can it be 
otherwise, my hearers, than that men even in 
Christendom should have different gods, when 
so many read the Bible to cull from it a sup- 
port of some preconceived notion, and others 
do not even take the trouble to read it at all, 
but argue about what is reasonable and proper 
for God to be and to do, as if they were dis- 
cussing the character of an earthly emperor. 
In the latter case, however, they would be 
far too wise to make up their opinions inde- 
pendently of an authentic volume in their pos- 
session, purporting to be a sketch of the em- 
peror's life and character. 

My hearers, let us all be sure that our God — 
the God whom we think of and reverence, and 
whose favor we seek to gain — is the God whom 
the Bible reveals ; and not some other being 
less holy, or less just, or less omniscient, or less 
unchangeable, whom our imagination has de- 
picted. 

II. There is a kind of practical pantheism 
abroad in the world, in that many rever- 
ence and obey public opinion, and make it, so 
far, their god. Gods many and lords many do 
indeed have dominion over him who asks con- 
tinually what will be thought of him, what will 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 25 



render him popular, or what course the majority 
of the people follow. But are there none such 
among ourselves ? 

My friend, who hast till this time lived in a 
full belief of the duty and necessity of personal 
piety, and yet hast neglected the whole subject 
as if it only belonged to another race of beings, 
art thou well assured, that here has not been the 
main secret of thy irreligious life, and that here 
will not be the secret, — which may Heaven 
forbid ! — of thy death without Christ, and of 
thy joyless eternity? Oh, the fear of man 
which bringeth a snare, how strong is its snare, 
how many are its victims. 

But he who fears and obeys man rather than 
God, has he no other gods before Jehovah ? 
To what purpose is it that he knows the name 
or even the attributes of the true God, if he 
deliberately neglects His well known commands, 
through fear of public opinion, or because some 
one individual will be foolish enough to despise 
him, or wicked enough to hate him if he be- 
comes a religious man ? Men would not dare 
thus to set at nought the authority of an earthly 
monarch. But God is unseen. His day of 
reckoning is future. Men, therefore, risk the 
consequences ; and when they listen to the ap- 
3 



26 



SERMON I. 



peal : " Whether it is right to obey men rather 
than God, judge ye," they decide the question 
practically in the affirmative. " Know ye not," 
says an apostle, " that whom ye obey, his ser- 
vants ye are to whom ye obey ? " If we obey 
men, singly or collectively, either their com- 
mands or their opinions, rather than God, w 7 e 
do in a most important sense have other gods 
before him. He may in such case justly say, 
"if I be a father where is mine honor? and if I 
be a master where is my fear ? " Let us see 
to it that we have no other gods before Jeho- 
vah, either in word or in deed. 

Again, we may break the first commandment 
by loving the creature more than the Creator. 
No homage is so acceptable to God, as the love 
of intelligent beings. It is the subject of his 
first and great command. In this He has made 
our highest happiness to consist ; wisely placing 
the next degree of happiness in the exercise of 
the benevolent affections towards others, and 
in the innocent love of his visible works. 

And now suppose we reverse this natural 
and heaven directed order, and fix our warmest 
and most affectionate regard on created objects, 
while towards himself we feel no love. What 
offence could be greater in his sight ? How 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 



27 



solemn and severe the rebuke of Christ : " I 
know you that ye have not the love of God in 
vou." 

J v.- " -/ 

My hearers, have we the love of God in our 
hearts ? Is it supreme ? Is it deep and fer- 
vent ? Has it any fruits ? Or do we admire 
the works of his hands more than Himself, 
and love those amiable and congenial hearts 
with whose affection He has blessed us, 
more than his character as expressed in the 
pages of inspiration ? 

Let us listen to the exhortation which speak- 
eth unto us as unto sons : " Little children, 
keep yourselves from idols. " Our friends, our 
business, our possessions, the objects of taste 
by which we are surrounded, 

How they divide our wavering minds. 
And leave but half for God. 

Alas! do they leave half? Do they, in 
every case, leave any portion, for Him who first 
claims the whole, but who will kindly share all 
but the supreme place in our affections, with 
any and every lawful object of regard ? Have 
we given him that supreme place ? Let us 



28 



SERMON I. 



beware, even in the heart's most cherished im- 
pulses, that we do not have other gods before 
Jehovah. It may be called an amiable weak- 
ness ; but He regards it as a great sin. Un- 
less repented of and forsaken, it is a damning 
sin. " He that loveth father or mother, son or 
daughter, more than me, is not worthy of 
me." 

Let me now call your attention to one other 
important point connected with this command- 
ment. The verse preceding the text is as fol- 
lows : " I am the Lord thy God which have 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt and out 
of the house of bondage." Then follows the 
text, " Thou shalt have no other gods before 
me." As much as to say, — unless indeed, which 
amounts to nearly the same thing, we consider 
these words as a preface to the whole deca- 
logue, — " I have so signally blessed you, and 
so plainly shown myself to you, that you of all 
men will be without excuse if you do not rev- 
erence and obey me as your God." 

My hearers, what might Jehovah say to us 
on this score ? Rather, what might he not 
say ? I will not apply the language literally to 
our national history, nor refer minutely to those 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 



29 



" works of God, which w r e have heard and 
known, and our fathers have told us." 

But with our education, our condition in so- 
ciety, and our many lessons and remembrancers 
concerning God, if we forget, disobey, and, as 
far as our homage is concerned, practically de- 
throne him, are we not of all men most inex- 
cusable ? 

And now what says conscience in view of 
the first commandment ? We have not wor- 
shipped Jupiter, or Brahma, or the grand Lama ; 
but have we worshipped Jehovah ? 

Have we taken suitable pains by attending to 
the light within and without us, especially to 
the light of revelation, — to ascertain the real 
character of God ? Or, have we imagined him 
altogether or nearly such an one as ourselves, 
just using the Bible so far as to find some epi- 
thet or illustration, which, taken by itself, 
seems to favor our own wishes as to the treat- 
ment which sinners are likely to receive at his 
hands, and regarding every view of him as 
unsatisfactory, which disagrees with our own 
apparent interests ? 

Again, whatever we have thought of God, 

3* 



30 



SERMON I. 



how have we felt towards him ? How have 
we treated him ? Have we recognized in him 
a Ruler as well as a Creator ? Have we 
thanked him for our blessings, and implored his 
forgiveness of our sins, and entreated his favor 
and guidance for the future ? Have we been 
anxious to know his will ? When it was 
known, have we denied ourselves, and even 
risked an offence to others, in order to do it ? 
Or, on the other hand, have we done our own 
pleasure, and obeyed the demands of public 
opinion, and deferred to the wishes or preju- 
dices of irreligious persons ? Have we cherished 
within our hearts the love of gold — "that vile 
idolatry ?" Or has some one or many dear 
friends been so dear to us, that God who made 
them attractive, and kindly gave us their 
friendship^ has been forgotten, and if not whol- 
ly excluded from our hearts, compelled to take 
a lower place, that these idols might have our 
warmest affections, and be the objects of our 
most fervent and constant thoughts ? 

My hearers, let us think on these things. 
They are not matters of curious speculation, 
but practical questions between God and our 
souls* A careful consideration of them will, I 



THE FIRST COMMANDMENT. 



31 



am persuaded, convince us all, that by the deeds 
even of this law we cannot be justified. 

It may convince some of us, that we have 
never known any thing of true love and ac- 
ceptable service to God. 



SERMON II. 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT, 

EXODUS 20 : 4—6. 

THOU SHALT NOT MAKE UNTO THEE ANY GRAVEN IMAGE 
OR ANY LIKENESS OF ANY THING THAT IS IN HEAVEN 
ABOVE, OR THAT IS IN THE EARTH BENEATH, OR THAT 
IS IN THE WATER UNDER THE EARTH '. THOU SHALT 
NOT BOW DOWN THYSELF TO THEM, NOR SERVE 
THEM : FOR I THE LORD THY GOD AM A JEALOUS GOD, 
VISITING THE INIQUITY OF THE FATHERS UPON THE 
CHILDREN UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION 
OF THEM THAT HATE ME J AND SHEWING MERCY UNTO 
THOUSANDS OF THEM THAT LOVE ME, AND KEEP MY 
COMMANDMENTS. 

In discoursing upon the first commandment, I 
remarked in substance that the sin of idolatry, 
strictly so called, is forbidden, not in that, but 
in the second. The main point of the second 
commandment is the forbidding of any sculp- 



34 



SERMON II. 



ture, or other representation, of any person or 
thing, for purposes of devotion. The making 
and using of such things for such purposes, — 
whether they be actually taken for gods, or 
not, — the bowing down to them, as well as 
the serving them, is forbidden. 

" Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven 
image, or any likeness of any thing that is in 
Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, 
or that is in the water under the earth ; thou 
shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve 
them." It has been ignorantly imagined by 
some that this commandment forbids the exer- 
cise of all the imitative arts. But the last 
clause, is, according to the Hebrew idiom, the 
key to the first, and shows that sculpture 
and painting were forbidden only w hen the ob- | 
jects thus made were intended to be bowed 
down to, and either worshipped, or used as 
aids in worship. 

I have already spoken of the ten command- 
ments as forming what is generally styled the 
moral laiv, comprehending the great principles 
of duty towards God and man, and leaving for 
another code all statutes of an arbitrary kind, 
which enjoin certain acts, like those of the 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 



35 



Temple worship for instance, which became 
duties only because they were thus enjoined. 

Perhaps, at first sight, this commandment 
may appear to belong to the latter rather than 
to the former class. Of what consequence, we 
might ask, can it be, in what external mode we 
worship God, if we only worship him with sin- 
cere and humble hearts ? 

Why not use images, and paintings, and 
crosses, to refresh our memory and strengthen 
our faith, as well as weary the mind by vain 
attempts to conceive of the objects of a spirit- 
ual world ? Why not employ the aid of the bodi- 
ly sense to assist our mental vision, and to bring 
more distinctly before us the wonderful events 
which the Bible describes ? Why should not 
christians enact the scene of the crucifixion, 
with a ghastly image, and a reservoir of blood 
to be pierced with the spear, and the ladder, and 
attendants taking down the body, and the other 
minute dramatic forms which may be annually 
witnessed at Rome ? Or if all this is thought 
too absurd, and too revolting to true taste, as well 
as to enlightened devotion, why not at least use 
the crucifix, and have painted emblems of the 
Trinity, and in every possible way aid our 
feeble imaginations in religious worship, pro- 



36 



SERMON II. 



vided that the true object of that worship be not 
lost sight of? 

These inquiries lead us to examine what 
may be called the moral philosophy of the sec- 
ond commandment. It is very plain in the 
first place, that the Deity has a perfect right to 
require such homage from his intelligent crea- 
tures, and that it should be rendered in such a 
way, as he chooses, — and that His will, clearly 
expressed, upon this as well as other subjects, 
becomes a binding law. Upon a point so funda- 
mental as that of acceptable worship to our Cre- 
ator and our God, we might expect, that some 
of his commands would be of a permanent kind, 
and not merely ceremonial and temporary in 
their nature. The subject rests on the same 
ground as the duty of worshipping at all. It 
might be asked, Why does Jehovah choose 
to be worshipped ? Since He is infinitely 
glorious and blessed, why does he demand 
praise ? Since he is omniscient, why does he 
require us to tell him our wants? Since he is 
unchangeable, why does he encourage our sup- 
plications ? 

To all this the reply is ready. Such is his 
sovereign pleasure. He has revealed it directly 
by the universal light of nature. He has 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT, 



37 



poured upon it the broad illuminating blaze of 
Revelation. Thenceforth and therefore relig- 
ious worship becomes a duty, a matter of moral 
obligation, resulting from man's relation to 
God, and from God's will expressed to man. 

So in this case. The Deity, for certain rea- 
sons, prefers that his creatures should address 
themselves directly to Him, with no mediation 
but that of his mysteriously divine and equal 
Son, and without any visible forms and figures 
to aid the imagination. Consequently, the use 
of such forms and figures is a sin, a moral evil, 
a malum per se. If any doubt the correctness 
of this view, let them remember the wide dif- 
ference between Jehovah and every other Leg- 
islator or Ruler : since his character and his 
will form the true standard of right and wrong. 
We can imagine no ultimate reason, why even 
murder and theft are wrong, than that He has 
so willed. Else why is there not moral wrong 
in the rapine and slaughter carried on by man 
among the brute creation ? 

But if we may, not unlawfully or presump- 
tuously, inquire further into this matter, I 
would remark again, that in view of what may 
be called the gravitating or downward tenden- 
cies of man's spiritual nature, the Deity may 
4 



38 



SERMON II. 



have considered, that the use of outward symbols 
of worship would tend to lower the standard 
of that devotion, and gradually to withdraw 
the mind from those contemplations of a spir- 
itual Being, in which such symbols were origin- 
ally designed to aid us ; in other words, that 
these objects, at first intended as wings to the 
soul in her flight upward to God, w 7 onld become 
leaden weights to drag her down, or at least 
waxen pinions, w 7 hich would but aid her to a 
most disastrous fall. 

The flesh and the spirit, strangely as in 
man they are joined together, are yet " con- 
trary the one to the other." The former seems 
to be a veil, or rather a thick and impenetra- 
ble wall, to hide from the latter its spiritual 
kindred ; so that the spirit of men, though akin 
to that of God, and to that of angels, seems 
isolated, and for the time degraded, like the 
captive, who in a massive castle hears the 
voices of creation, and the joy of happy multi- 
tudes, but cannot see the forms of men and 
things, nor have with them a free communica- 
tion. 

And yet there is, if I may so say, a little 
loophole in this wall of spiritual isolation, 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 



39 



through which God permits the human spirit 
to look forth upon the spiritual world. It is 
at the point where He renders Himself percep- 
tible to the moral vision, permitting our spirit 
to have communion with his Spirit — as children 
with a father. This, though it does not teach 
us all knowledge concerning Spirits, does nev- 
theless tend to enlarge our conceptions, to 
etherialize our views, so that a man who has 
daily for a long time, approached God in devout 
contemplative adoration and prayer, begins to 
see by faith something more of our noblest na- 
ture. He begins to understand something of 
his spiritual being, and of the wide world of 
spirits with which he is intimately and eter- 
nally, though mysteriously, connected. 

And now suppose that finding this adoration 
of a spiritual Being somew T hat difficult, he calls 
in the aid of sensible objects, and worships God 
through the medium of a statue or a picture ; 
there is perhaps a sense of relief to the mind, but 
is it because that spiritual view has become 
easier and more satisfactory ? Is that opening 
in the wall made wider: and does a broader and 
more intelligent view offer itself to the eager 
soul, panting for companionship with its kin- 
dred spirits, and especially with the great Fa- 



40 



SERMON II. 



ther of spirits ? Oh no 9 — -that little opening 
has been actually walled up ; and the sense of 
relief comes from the souPs giving up her pain- 
ful but aspiring and elevating attempts, and 
sitting down quietly within the narrow circle of 
bodily vision, worshipping God by sight rather 
than by faith ; — thus instead of her being borne 
upwards to the Deity, the Deity is rather 
brought down to the souPs level, and those in- 
tended wings have become weights. 

Nor is this mere theory. Look at all those 
branches of the originally pure and simple 
church, in which images and paintings have 
been introduced, and you will find the standard 
of spiritual religion sadly and hopelessly degra- 
ded. Now and then an individual, both in 
the Greek and Latin churches, exhibits a depth 
and fervor of spiritual feeling, which has resist- 
ed all these untoward influences. But in gen- 
eral, I need not say what gross superstition, 
and what a substitution of the form of godliness 
for its power have marked those churches. 
Forgiveness of sin by human authority, the 
withholding of the Bible from the people, 
and the utmost irreligion and immorality 
among a large portion even of the priesthood, 
are but a few of the fruits, known and read 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 



41 



of all men, of the transgression of that com- 
mandment, which forbids the use of " any graven 
image, or of the likeness of any thing that is in 
the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or 
in the waters under the earth." Thus may 
we learn to justify the ways of God to man, 
and see in part the moral grounds of even ap- 
parently arbitrary enactments. 

But there is another consideration to be no- 
ticed. False theology has generally been 
connected with idolatry. The history both 
of the pagan world and of the nominal church 
shows us that if men begin by worshipping 
the true God with the help of graven images 
and other visible objects, they are likely to 
end in worshipping false gods by the same 
means. 

Idolatry seems to have been the universal 
passion of the human heart. Not satisfied with 
having false divinities, the pagan world has 
uniformly, or almost so, had visible representa- 
tions of those divinities. Statues and rude 
paintings, the forms of beasts, of birds, of rep- 
tiles, and even of vegetables, have been pre- 
pared and honored by different heathen nations. 
Shrines have been built for them ; temples 

adorned with, and consecrated to them ; and 
4* 



42 



SERMON II. 



placed in the van of armies they have seemed 
to lead on vast military forces to battle, and to 
victory. 

Surrounded as were the Israelites by these, in 
many cases, splendid symbols of pagan worship, 
and having themselves only the few and simple 
forms of the tabernacle and afterwards of the 
Temple, it is not strange that they should have 
been in danger of borrowing the fashions of their 
neighbors. But the moment they did so, they 
borrowed their false theology too. For I can- 
not think that their worshipping the golden 
calf, an act of folly into which they were led 
even while Sinai was trembling under the foot- 
steps of the great Legislator, was only another 
mode of adoring Jehovah. It was clearly an 
imitation of the Egyptian calf-worship, and 
when they said " these be thy gods, O 
Israel," it seems plain that though they still 
spake of the Lord, they had for the moment 
adopted other gods beside Him, if not wholly 
instead of Him. 

It was so in later days. When the images' 
were set up in the groves, on every high hill, 
and under every green tree, — it was Baal and 
Ashtaroth, and their kindred idol divinities, and 
not Jehovah, whom the misguided people thus 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 



43 



adored. Is it strange, therefore, that to such 
a people as the Jews, with pagan idolatry on 
every side, God should hare forbidden even di- 
vine idolatry, that is, the worship even of him- 
self bv the aid of images ? 

Nor has the history of the Christian church 
failed to illustrate the same tendency. From 
crosses and crucifixes how soon did both 
the eastern and western churches proceed to 
images and pictures, not only of God and 
Christ and the Holy Ghost, but of the virgin, 
and of saints and martyrs almost without num- 
ber ; until these beings, and the paintings or 
carvings which represented them, originally and 
piously designed as mere intercessors and aids 
to devotion, became, at least to the more ignor- 
ant, actual objects of worship. 

Such is human nature, as developed in all 
ages ; and in forbidding the use of images and 
paintings as aids to devotion even when Him- 
self is its object, Jehovah has plainly taken 
the most effectual mode of forbidding and pre- 
venting the worship of false divinities. 

As to the question what constitutes idolatry, 
it is perhaps needless to say more than has al- 
ready been said. The only symbolical ordinances 
of pure Christianity, — Baptism and the Lord's 



44 



SERMON II. 



Supper, are sufficiently distinct from any breach 
of the second commandment in that they pre- 
sent no actual likeness of any thing. Were the 
bread fashioned into human shape, and the wine 
made to flow from an orifice in the side of the 
figure, there might indeed seem to be an incon- 
sistency between the Jewish command and the 
Christian ordinance ; though even in that case, 
many of the ceremonies of the ancient temple- 
service might appear liable to the same objec- 
tion. Still on a careful examination, nothing 
will be found to have been prescribed even in 
that symbolical and prefigurative ritual, contra- 
dictory to the great unrepealed prohibition of 
image-worship. 

It is unnecessary to repeat that the second 
commandment may, however, be broken, with- 
out the introduction of any false gods, and 
even without actual worship of the forms by 
which the true God is represented. To make an 
image, or which is the same thing, to have one 
made, and bow down before it, is idolatry, though 
not of the grossest kind, even where there is an 
intelligent recognition of the spiritual Being 
thus represented. Such a sin may indeed be 
committed ignorantly, and with forgiveness ; 
yet it transgresses a positive command of God, 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 45 

and has wrought infinite mischief in the church ; 
causing her even to rival paganism in her re- 
volting forms, and absurd and cumbrous ritual. 

I need not inform you that the second com- 
mandment is by one nominal and corrupt 
branch of the church deliberately erased, and 
the number supplied by the division of another 
into two parts. Thousands and thousands even 
in our own country, denied access to the 
word of God to see for themselves what he has 
forbidden, are taught the ten commandments 
without the second. 

To touch for a few moments upon what may 
be called the history of the second command- 
ment in the christian church : — I will observe 
that for the first three or four centuries, the 
use of images and paintings in divine worship 
was wholly unknown. About the year 300, 
images were first introduced merely as orna- 
ments. A council held at Eliberis, in ancient 
Gaul, in the year 305, condemned this practice 
as an innovation which looked strongly towards 
idolatry. For about a century, however, the 
use of images merely as ornaments, gradually 
gained ground, though opposed strenuously by 
Epiphanius and other distinguished fathers of 



46 



SERMON It. 



the church, as bearing too near a resemblance I 
to the pagan use of idols. 

After this time till the beginning of the 
eighth century, they were used as aids to de- 
votion, but not actually worshipped, at least by 
airy but the ignorant. But at the beginning o: 
the eighth century, both the monks and the 
common people worshipped images without 
scruple, and an edict of Pope Leo in 726, 
was published to condemn this dangerous 
innovation, ruinous we may say, to the purity 
of the church. From, that time the controvert 
sies between the Iconoclasts or image breakers, 
and the Iconolatise or image-adorers, became 
long and frequent, until the reformation dividec 
the christian world into two comparatively 
peaceful parties, one of w r hich under various 
protestant names renounces the whole practice, 
while it still forms one great feature of the 
church of anti-christ, both in its Greek and its 
Roman branches. 

It is worthy of notice under this historical 
head, that the Jews so literally interpret and 
so reverently obey this part of their origina" 
decalogue, that most of them suffer no statues 
even in their own private houses, much less as 
ornaments in their synagogues. A similar an- 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 47 



tipathy, though probably not on the same ac- 
count, led the Mohammedans to destroy some 
of the most beautiful monuments of antiquity, 
both sacred and profane, when they gained pos- 
session of Constantinople. 

It may not be uninteresting to notice also 
the commentary on the second commandment, 
contained in the answers to two of the ques- 
tions in the Assembly's catechism, — the larger, 
in distinction from the shorter, generally used. 
If the answers shall be judged to be more mi- 
nute than was needful, and to hint strongly at 
certain things of a local and temporary na- 
ture, peculiar to the English church in 1643, 
they are still adapted to give us some good 
thoughts concerning the spiritual bearings of 
this commandment. For we cannot doubt that 
it has spiritual bearings, which might have been 
more fully developed, if Christ had been pleased 
to comment upon it as freely as upon the sixth 
and the seventh. 

The first question is, " what are the duties re- 
quired in the second commandment ?" Answer ; 
"The duties required in 'the second command- 
ment, are the receiving, observing, and keeping 
pure and entire, all such religious worship and 
ordinances as God hath instituted in his word, 



48 



SERMON II. 



particularly prayer and thanksgiving in the 
name of Christ ; the reading, hearing, and 
preaching of the word ; the administration and 
receiving of the sacraments ; church government 
and discipline, the ministry and maintenance 
thereof, religious fasting, swearing by the name 
of God and vowing unto him ; as also the dis- 
approving, detesting, opposing all false worship, 
and according to each one's place and calling, 
removing it, and all monuments of idolatry." 

The next question is ; " what are the sins 
forbidden in the second commandment An- 
swer ; " The sins forbidden in the second com- 
mandment, are all devising, counselling, com- 
manding, using, and any ways approving any 
religious worship not instituted by God him- 
self ; tolerating a false religion, the making any 
representation of God, of all, or of any of the 
three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or 
outwardly, in any kind of image or likeness of 
any creature whatsoever, all worshipping of it, 
or God in it or by it, the making of any rep- 
resentation of feigned deities, and all worship 
of them, a service belonging to them, all su- 
perstitious services, corrupting the worship of 
God, adding to it, taking from it, whether in- 
vented and taken up of ourselves, or received 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 49 



by tradition from others, though under the title 
of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or 
any other pretence whatsoever, simony, sacri- 
lege, all neglect, contempt, hindering and op- 
posing the worship and ordinances of which 
God hath appointed.' 5 So say, though somewhat 
diffusely and quaintly, yet in general very scrip- 
turally, the venerable fathers of the Westmin- 
ster Assembly of Divines. 

We come now to the remarkable language 
which follows the direct command, assigning a 
reason for its observance, and showing the con- 
sequences of its obedience or disobedience. 
" For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, 
visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the 
children, unto the third and fourth generation 
of them that hate me, and shewing mercy unto 
thousands of them that love me and keep my 
com mand merits." 

The first words exhibit the peculiar feeling 
with which Jehovah regards all rivalry, if so it 
may be called, in the affections and homage of 
his subjects ; this feeling is here called jealousy, 
In the same manner He often speaks in the 
Bible, of worshippers of strange gods, as adul- 
terers and the like. 

As to the remainder of the language, it mere- 
5 



50 



SERMON II. 



]j refers to the fact, that by His wise constitu- 
tion of things, the effects both of obedience 
and of disobedience remain for a long time, 
even after the original actors are no more ; not 
that the child was to be held personally respon- 
sible for the sins of his parents, — for that prin- 
ciple is elsewhere in the Bible expressly dis- 
claimed ; but simply that blessings and curses 
remain by their effects through more than 
one generation, thus appealing both to the pa- 
ternal and the patriotic feelings of men. How 
plainly does the whole history of the world ap- 
peal to these feelings. How careful should we 
be both as parents and philanthropists, concern- 
ing our own example and character, which will 
be as they always have been, to a certain ex- 
tent hereditary. We should not dare to do, in 
this view, what w r e might be reckless enough 
to do, if only our own interest and future des- 
tiny were at stake. 

And now, in view of these two commands, 
the first and second, apparently the least prac- 
tical as to us, and on that account the least in- 
teresting of all, — what should be our own re- 
flections ? Are we to look on them with self- 
satisfaction, and say, " All these things at least 
we have kept from our youth up ?" Are w r e 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 51 



to say with the Pharisee, " God I thank thee 
that I am not as other men, pagans, idolaters, 
or even as those poor deluded people, who un- 
der the Christian name, worship saints and 
images ?" 

My hearers, I know not but some of you 
will suspect me at times of trying to make out 
a case against you for the mere sake of doing 
so, and of giving every subject a practical turn, 
merely for form's sake or in a professional man- 
ner as a preacher. 

Such, however, is not the truth. Could I 
pronounce you and myself blameless respecting 
any part of the divine law, gladly would I do 
it, and we would join in hearty thanksgiving to 
Almighty God, that as to that part we were 
without sin. We have sins enough, without 
imagining, or confessing, or charging upon each 
other, any that do not belong to us. 

But let us not forget the illustration which 
Christ gives us of the spiritual and far-reaching 
nature of these few and simple commands. 
Indeed is it necessary that we take those com- 
ments into the account at all, in order to see 
that this commandment in forbidding the wor- 
ship even of God by images, does in fact re- 
quire that He should be otherwise worshipped, 



52 



sermon rr. 



viz : in Spirit and in truth ? Have we done so ? 
Do our hearts pray ? Do our souls praise ? 
Do our spirits give thanks ? If not, what are 
our sanctuaries, and pulpits, and psalms, and 
reverent looks, and decorous attitudes, now 
sitting, now standing,-— but so many emblems 
and forms, not more acceptable than graven 
images, and the most idolatrous genuflexions ? 
Let us not forget, that " God abhors the sacri- 
fice, where not the heart is found," and that if 
we are not in the daily, constant habit of sin^ 
eere, spontaneous and heartfelt devotion, we do 
negatively, if not positively break even the sec- 
ond commandment, the very one with reference 
to which, above all the rest, we have been ac- 
customed in our thoughts, to plead " not guilty." 

And then, there is another view of the mat- 
ter which should not be overlooked. I have 
endeavored to show in this discourse, that the 
second commandment may be broken without 
breaking the first ; — in other words, that it is 
sinful to worship even the true God by the 
help of those visible symbols which He has, for 
wise reasons, forbidden. I would also repeat 
a previous remark, that the first commandment 
may be broken without any breach of the sec- 
ond, The man who loves his gold better than 



THE SECOND COMMANDMENT. 



53 



his God, has no golden image made that he 
may fall down and worship it. The man who 
fears and obeys men rather than God, has no 
sculpture or painting, representing public opin- 
ion. Friends who idolize each other, have no 
visible symbol which they adore. Yet God 
sees the heart, and where the treasure is, there 
will the heart be also. 

My hearers, let us thank God that we are 
not pagans or idolaters in the outward sense. 
But are we guilty of no /^art-idolatry ? Let 
us not be deceived ; God is not mocked. No 
outward reverence can blind His all seeing eye, 
to the true secret of our soul's chief regard. If 
we love and serve the creature instead of the 
creator, He will know our iniquity, — He will 
remember it, — He will visit it upon us, and 
perhaps for our sakes upon others, whom He 
has wisely, though mysteriously, left dependant 
upon our influence. In view of the whole, let 
us adopt the words of the poet : — 

" The dearest idol I have known, 

Whate'er that idol be, 
Help me to tear it from thy throne, 

And worship only Thee." 

5* 



SERMON III. 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 
EXODUS 20 : 7, 

THOU SHALT NOT TAKE THE NAME OP THE LORD THY 
GOD IN VAIN ; FOR THE LORD WILL NOT HOLD HIM 
GUILTLESS THAT TAKETH HIS NAME IN VAIN., 

This is the third Commandment ; and of the 
whole ten among the most practical,— some- 
times I have thought the most practical, — in its 
application to modern society in this country. 
As to other countries, if we may judge from 
their literature, and from the records of travel- 
lers, we shall find reason to conclude that as a 
profane people we do not stand wholly alone. 

One thing is certain ; it must be extremely 
mortifying to a citizen of any Christian nation, 
to find among the rude and unevangelized in- 
habitants of distant islands and continents, re- 



56 



SERMON III. 



membrancers of his home, and the familiar 
sounds of his native language, only in the shape 
of revolting oaths taught the natives by his 
own countrymen. To this mortification, we 
who speak the English language, are perhaps 
more liable than those of any other Christian 
nation. 

This is one of those commands, which like 
the fourth, concern our duties to our Maker 
only, and on that account, — strange to say, — 
are less thought of than any others. Men who 
would not for the world bear false witness 
against their neighbor's good name, will profane 
the name of their God. Just as those who 
would not rob their neighbor of a single dollar 
of his profits, will rob their Maker of that one 
seventh of time, which he claims as his. 
There is one thing to be specially noticed 
about this third commandment. Though men 
are not injured by our transgressions of it, ex- 
cept by example, and will not punish it, — yet 
God has solemnly said, " I will not hold him 
guiltless that taketh my name in vain." 

But what is it to take the name of God in 
vain ? The Shorter Catechism in defining the 
prohibition contained in the third command- 
ment, says, " The third commandment requir- 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 



57 



eth the holy and reverend use of God's names, 
titles, attributes, ordinances, word and works ; 
and forbiddeth all profaning or abusing any 
thing whereby God maketh himself known." 

I am not aware that this definition can justly 
be regarded as too minute and comprehensive. 
The grand secret seems to be, the absolute 
need in all governments, of a certain degree of 
reverence to the person, and character, and 
doings of its sovereign, — whether it be the 
sovereign king, ruling alone, or the sovereign 
people, ruling themselves by a delegation. 

There must be not only law, and obedience? 
and respect for the government of whatever 
kind it is, but some degree of reverence, — 
that is, a manifestation of respect, some forms 
of propriety, some etiquette in manners, ox 
dress, or mode of approach; else all dignity, 
and in due time all authority, will be destroyed. 
All this, in many human governments, has been 
carried to an extravagant and absurd degree ; 
and seclusion on the part of the monarch, to- 
gether with the most abject submission and the 
most servile fear on the part of the subject, 
have given to our view one of the most hu- 
miliating and revolting features of despotism* 

Still, there is wisdom in the notion of sa-* 



58 



SERMON III. 



credness and reverence, as connected even with 
human law ; since it is but a humble shadow- 
ing forth of the profound veneration with which 
Jehovah has inspired even the savage breast 
towards the unknown God, — the Great Spirit, 
and of the sacred dignity in which he has seen 
fit to clothe His own name and character. 

Nor let it be supposed that all this is for 
mere effect, or from any satisfaction our God 
and Father can be imagined to have, in the 
mere fact of being reverenced and feared by 
his children. He is a Father as well as a 
Creator. He speaks to us as to children, and 
encourages in us filial feelings, and a filial 
deportment ; but what wise father suffers his 
children, in their affectionate confidence, to 
treat him with the rude familiarity of a brother 
or an equal ? 

So God, for the better maintenance of that 
authority, which after all is rather for our benefit 
than for his own, has seen fit to implant rev- 
erence in the human breast, and to nourish it 
by various enactments, and among others, the 
one which forms our text — " Thou shalt not 
take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." 
He has designed to keep before our minds the 
vast, the infinite distinction, between Himself 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 59 



and his creatures. He has intended that we 
should remember, that although it was needful 
for him if he revealed himself to us at all, to 
reveal himself by a name and by traits of char- 
acter, and even figuratively as a person, speak- 
ing of hands and eyes, and the like ; — yet that 
he is a Spirit, — an infinite Spirit, and a Holy 
Spirit, towards whom the slightest irreverence 
is as absurd as it is dangerous ; in other words, 
that the God of heaven, though kind and con- 
descending, far beyond w T hat any earthly mon- 
arch has room to condescend, since His eleva- 
tion is infinite, may not safely be trifled with. 

Can we not see the justness and the wisdom 
of all this ? Does it look like a mere arbitrary 
arrangement on the part of God, imposing need- 
less restraint upon his humble creatures, and 
holding them at a needless distance ? I think 
not. The moral philosophy of the third com- 
mandment seems to me very obvious and intel- 
ligible. 

And now let us inquire in what ways it may 
be broken. 

The first is, by downright malignant blas- 
phemy. This form of profanity is least com- 
mon, and among ourselves almost unknown. 
It is true, atheism and infidelity have their 
priests and their altars, where you might hear. 



60 



SERMON III. 



if they were within your hearing, the most hor- 
rible insults cast upon God, the Father, the 
Son, and the Holy Ghost ; insults so gross and 
so revolting to the universal sense of right, that 
our laws, ever slow and justly so, to interfere 
with matters of religion, have in a few instan- 
ces interposed their authority, and prohibited 
such vile and corrupting blasphemy, and in one 
instance punished its hoary-headed high priest. 

But all this concerns not us. Not one in 
this assembly, hardly one in our whole coun- 
try, while in his sober senses, would ever de- 
liberately insult the Majesty of heaven, or blas- 
pheme his word, or call his works the works of 
a demon. Let us all guard however, against 
the habit of cavilling with the Bible, of pro- 
nouncing its apparent doctrines unreasonable, 
and of murmuring at the acts of Providence by 
w r hich we are made to suffer, — all which things 
certainly partake of the spirit of that very sin 
to which of all others we should be readv to 
plead not guilty. 

The second form of profanity I shall men- 
tion, is the careless or passionate use, in our 
speech or writing, of the name or word or works 
of God, especially his future and final work of 
justice. There is something which has never 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 61 



been fully explained, in man's mental constitu- 
tion, leading him to garnish his speech when 
under high excitement, with words pertaining 
to God and the eternal world. 

If we grant it to be a habit which has been 
transmitted from generation to generation, we 
leave the origin of the habit still unaccounted 
for. I have sometimes been disposed to refer 
it to the love of the marvellous, so universal in 
man, which leads the mind when strongly ex- 
cited by passion of any kind, to seek the won- 
derful and exciting things of another world, as 
appropriate to its high wrought emotions. 

It may possibly be regarded moreover, as a 
kind of internal evidence of the immortality of 
the soul, and of the existence of a spiritual 
world ; since a common instinct leads even 
those who affect to deny these things, to 
use their names as freely as household words, 
the moment all restraint is taken off, and the 
mind allowed to run riot in its own fancies and 
passions. 

Be this as it may, it is a fact, interesting 
to the philosopher, and most painful to the 
Christian, that many men, the moment they 
are angry, or alarmed, or overjoyed, use the 
name of the Most High, sometimes in mere 
6 



62 



SERMON III. 



recklessness, sometimes to invoke his damnation 
upon others, and sometimes, strange and hor- 
rid impiety ! upon themselves ; — offering what 
a well known tract styles, the swearer's prayer, 
a prayer which if heard, consigns his soul to 
eternal perdition. One wretch even went so 
far as to call upon God to do this, for Christ- s 
sake, an imprecation to which an aged servant 
of God who stood by, solemnly and pertinently 
replied, — "My friend, God has done a great 
many things for Christ's sake ; perhaps he will 
do this also." The man was much impressed, 
and I believe, permanently reformed. 

Of all these forms and modes of profane 
speaking, I consider that which is done in cool 
blood, from mere recklessness and habit, as 
most offensive in the sight of God. The infu- 
riated man who assails his dumb beast, or his 
offending fellow-man, with curses and impreca- 
tions, has indeed the sin of anger, — which the 
gospel calls constructive murder, — to answer 
for, besides that of profaneness ; yet we may 
suppose a man to use these forbidden words in 
a fit of passion, who would have too much con- 
science to use them in mere sport. To say 
that the latter would be the greater sin, would 
imply no palliation of the former. 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 



63 



There is another form of profaneness, — I 
mean profane writing, — which on this and other 
accounts, is more aggravated than most writers 
or readers seem to imagine. Many writers, 
especially of fiction, either in poetry or prose, 
chiefly the latter, seem to think it no harm to 
put the most horrid oaths into the mouths of 
their fictitious personages, especially if they 
contrive to mask their enormity to the eye, by 
dashes and asterisks. But wherein this differs 
from any other profaneness, except in being 
more deliberate, and more pernicious in the 
way of example, I cannot see. 

If it be said that the portraiture of character 
and manners cannot be complete without it, 
I would ask whether it is necessary that 
all descriptions of character should be thus 
depicted, and held up to the gaze of thousands 
who will look not to loathe and avoid, but to 
imitate. 1 am fully persuaded that many moral 
and amiable men have in this way contributed 
to the promotion of one of the most degrading 
forms of popular wickedness. The elegant, or 
it may be the vulgar oaths, which when printed 
on the fine octavo page of a fashionable novel in 
its first edition, raised a smile in the drawing- 
room or the library, from some fair or literary 



64 



SERMON III. 



reader, are transferred in process of time? 
through the channels of coarse paper and a cir- 
culating library, to the lowest dregs of society ; 
and our streets echo with a profaneness, which 
at once by its boldness and ingenuity, shows 
itself to hare been the product of no ordinary 
mind. 

A profane word may sometimes, though I 
think very rarely, be spoken or written by way 
of matter of fact statement, — as when a wit- 
ness in court relates blasphemous words uttered 
by another ; but in general, the passing such 
words as current coin through society, is hard- 
ly less wrong than originally uttering them. 

Another form of profaneness is the use of 
words, which if not actually denoting the name 
or attributes of God, yet relate to serious sub- 
jects. Some of these words were originally of 
the most profane description, but have been 
softened down by abbreviation or otherwise, to 
a shape less repulsive to genteel or even female 
hearing and utterance. Of the latter class 
many instances are to be found in the older 
English authors, and more, I am inclined to 
think, in modern English, than American con- 
versation. 

Of another class, are such words as "heav- 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 



65 



ens," " faith," " bless my soul/' " my God," 
— borrowed from the French " mon Dieu," 
and strangely thought less objectionable, on 
account of the pronoun prefixed to it, — together 
with a score of other modest, and apparently 
harmless expressions, which do nevertheless 
entrench more or less upon the sacred limits, 
which like the bounds around Mount Sinai, 
God has been pleased to place around all that 
concerns himself and our high and solemn rela- 
tions to him. 

Upon this point, the command of Christ in 
his commentary on the Rabbinical precepts, 
has a direct bearing; " I say unto you, swear 
not at all, neither by heaven, for it is God's 
throne, neither by earth, for it is his footstool, 
neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the 
great king, neither shalt thou swear by thy 
head, because thou canst not make one hair 
w 7 hite or black; but let your communication 
be yea yea, nay nay, for whatsoever is more 
than this cometh of evil," 

How many little words of appeal, — modest 
oaths so disguised as hardly to be known, would 
the strict application of this principle banish 
from society, not less to the improvement of 
our taste than of our christian morals. Yes, 
6* 



66 



SERMON III. 



my friends, whatsoever is more than simple, 
and if need be, earnest assertion, cometh of 
evil, and leadeth to evil, both in ourselves and 
others. Nor is the church wholly free from 
fault in this matter. This is an evil which has 
crept into the habits of all classes in society ; 
and though we may look upon those scruples as 
needless, which forbid solemn judicial oaths, yet 
it were much to be desired that a dialect more 
simple and free from such expressions as those 
now referred to, should be adopted in ordinary 
conversation. 

I cannot forbear to' allude to another mode 
in which the spirit of the third commandment 
is often violated. I mean an irreverence, either 
habitual or occasional, in speaking of religious 
things. Many do so, without any scornful 
feelings, and with no consciousness that they 
are doing wrong ; and yet does not the spirit 
of this commandment forbid our taking liber- 
ties with the word and the works of God, as 
well as with His name ? 

What would an earthly monarch say to those 
w r ho should use his language as a convenient 
vehicle for other thoughts than those it w r as de- 
signed to convey, somewhat in the way of a 
parody, and speak lightly of some of his irppor- 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 67 



tant plans and doings ? Would it be a satis- 
factory excuse for them to deny that no light 
use had ever been made of his narne^ — that that 
had been held sacred? Certainly not. 

Now we often hear death spoken of lightly ; 
we hear people jesting about preparation for 
death : the doctrines and duties of religion are 
ridiculed, or at least treated with great levity; 
and what is more common than all, scripture is 
quoted in different connexions from those in 
which it properly belongs. Many eloquent 
orators honor the Bible in one respect, while 
they degrade it in another, by introducing its 
beautiful images and simple expressions, to set 
off one of their own periods, or to illustrate 
some political topic. 

I have been pained, nay, absolutely shocked 
at some instances of this irreverence which I 
have seen and heard from those of whom I 
should have hoped better things. All this 
must be regarded as a transgression of the third 
commandment. In it, God has forbidden every 
thing disrespectful to himself, and tending to 
break down those barriers, w hich for our benefit 
he has placed around himself and all that con- 
cerns himself. I could heartily wish that the 



68 



SERMON III. 



rude old couplet were again in fashion among 
the rhymes of the nursery : 

" 'Tis dangerous folly, 
To jest with things holy." 

Nor would it be altogether out of place on the 
tables of authors and newspaper editors, or in 
the parlors and drawing-rooms devoted to social 
pleaure. 

It is, I am persuaded, only a higher and a 
sterner standard, among the elder and more 
respectable classes in society, that can stay the 
tide of reckless levity in these matters among 
the young, and of brutal blasphemy among the 
lower orders, who fill our ears with the most 
horrid oaths at the corner of every street. 

Let me call upon parents, guardians, heads 
of families, employers, teachers, and all lovers 
of virtue and good order, to notice and to 
check this growing vice. Rarely do I go 
out in certain directions without being shock- 
ed with oaths and execrations more inge- 
niously blasphemous, and proceeding from 
younger lips, than I have ever heard except in 
larger, and in other respects more immoral 
cities. Boys from respectable families are fall- 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT. 



69 



ing into this degrading custom very rapidly I 
fear, from the mere force of example ; and the 
holy names of God and Christ, with heaven, 
hell, and damnation, the most solemn words, 
and expressing the most awful thoughts any 
language can convey, are fast becoming the 
familiar dialect, not only of the wretched can- 
didates for the prison and the gallows who 
swarm around us, but of many from whom their 
parents and the community expect better 
things. I earnestly intreat all who feel that 
morality, not to say religion, is worth caring 
for, both as a private and a public blessing, to 
exert their influence in this matter. 

And here let me say, that if it be true that 
out of the abundance of the heart the mouth 
speaketh, it is no less true that the habits of 
the lips affect the heart, and influence the whole 
character. It is impossible for young men who 
have acquired, however inadvertently, and as 
it might seem to some, almost innocently, the 
habit of profane swearing, to feel that rever- 
ence for God, and that respect for religion, 
which are readily admitted to lie at the founda- 
tion of all virtue. 

I do not deny that some men whose general 
influence is on the side of good things, may some- 



70 



SERMON III. 



times so far forget what is due to themselves 
and to others, — to say nothing of their Maker's 
claims — as to indulge in this ungentlemanly vice. 
But the effect even on them, so far as they do 
indulge, is to weaken their moral sense, and di- 
minish their right feelings concerning religious 
things ; and if you ask them, they will tell you 
so. What then must be the effect of such a 
practice on the young, whose principles and 
habits are in a great measure unformed ? Im- 
agine a community in which all the young men 
and boys, with no other vice, were profane 
sw T earers, either habitually or occasionally, and 
what would be the state of things there in fif- 
teen or twenty years ? The result would prove 
that whosoever should keep the w 7 hole law and 
yet offend in one point, would in more senses 
than one, be guilty of all. 

Let us all, then, both for our own good as 
well as that of others, seek to understand and 
to observe both the letter and the spirit of the 
third commandment. Let a due reverence not 
only for the name, but for the attributes, works, 
and doings, of the Great King of heaven, fill our 
minds. Let us observe the broad line of dis- 
tinction which both conscience and scripture 
have drawn between the things pertaining di- 



THE THIRD COMMANDMENT, 



71 



rectly to God, and all other things. The lat- 
ter may at times afford innocent amusement ; 
the former, never. All that concerns God, 
and heaven, and the soul, and a future state, is 
not innocently or safely to be trifled with. In 
proof of the last remark, we have God's own 
declaration ; " The Lord will not hold him 
guiltless that taketh his name in vain." 

In connexion with this subject, I cannot for- 
bear to notice the undoubted fact, that the sin 
in question has been often followed with sud- 
den and awful consequences, — I w 7 ill not say 
retribution, — in this world. Retribution belongs 
not to time but to eternity ; and yet the way 
of transgressors is hard, even before their feet 
stumble upon the dark mountains, where no 
sun or star shall ever rise. 

In more cases than one, men have fallen 
dead in the midst of the most horrid impreca- 
tions, or lost some one or all their senses, 
while calling upon God to make their perjury 
manifest. These things are not to be regarded 
as miracles. Perhaps in many cases they may 
be considered as physical effects of the high 
excitement which accompanied the profane- 
ness ; yet they should be looked upon as sol- 
emn warnings ; since God may use the nerves. 



72 



SERMON III. 



or other parts of man's physical frame, to show 
his abhorrence of sin, as well as earthquakes or 
fire from heaven. 

Finally, let us remember that the closing 
words of the text apply to all sin. The Lord will 
not hold us guiltless. Men may not know it. 
They may excuse it. We may forget it. God 
remembers. He will call us to an account. 
We may be sure our sin will find us out. God 
grant that in the day of its coming to light be- 
fore an assembled universe, we may not be 
found destitute of a saving interest in Christ, 
the only Redeemer. And what we do, we 
must do quickly. The night of death, the 
winter of the grave, draweth nigh. Are we 
ready for its coming ? If not, we have no time 
to lose. As the Lord will not hold him guilt- 
less who taketh his name in vain, so He will 
not suffer him to escape who despises his word, 
and neglects his great salvation. 



SER3ION IV. 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 

EXODUS 20 : 8—11. 

REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY, TO KEEP IT HOLY. SIX 
DAYS SHALT THOU LABOR, AND DO ALL THY WORK I 
BUT THE SEVENTH DAY IS THE SABBATH OF THE LORD 
THY GOD : IN IT THOU SHALT NOT DO ANY WORK, 
THOU, NOR THY SON, NOR THY DAUGHTER, THY MAN- 
SERVANT, NOR THY MAIDSERVANT, NOR THY CAT- 
TLE, NOR THY STRANGER THAT IS WITHIN THY GATES : 
FOR IN SIX DAYS THE LORD MADE HEAVEN AND EARTH, 
THE SEA, AND ALL THAT IN THEM IS, AND RESTED 
THE SEVENTH DAY *. WHEREFORE THE LORD BLESSED 
THE SABBATH DAY, AND HALLOWED IT, 

Thus the fourth Commandment stands upon 
the sacred page, as having been formally and 
solemnly given by God, among the still unre- 
pealed statutes of the Moral Law, Strange to 
7 



74 



SERMON IV. 



say, the question, whether it is still in force, 
has been discussed in a manner implying doubt, 
and even answered in the negative, by some 
who have shown no such disrespect for the re- 
mainder of the code, of which it forms a part. 

Forgetting that Sabbath-breaking is forbid- 
den on the same page with idolatry, murder, 
and theft, and that the denunciations of Divine 
wrath against those who do their own pleasure 
on God's holy day, are still in full force, many 
who pride themselves on their obedience to the 
moral law, have set aside this statute from its 
code, and thus to them this sin has become u no 
more sin." 

But has any plausible reason ever been as- 
signed for such an opinion ? If so, I know not 
what it is. The most common objection, per- 
haps even to some candid and devout minds a 
serious difficulty, is connected with the change 
of the Sabbath from the seventh day of the 
week to the first. Whatever force, however, 
there is in this objection, seems to me to lie 
not against the perpetuity of the Sabbath as an 
ordinance of God, but simply against the usage 
of the christian church. 

Had Christ, who founded the church, been 
less than divine, or the apostles, who, under his 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 



75 



direction, established its ordinances, less than 
inspired, this bearing of the objection would 
indeed be irresistible. In that case we might 
feel compelled, like the small sect of seventh 
day Baptists, — the only branch of the christian 
church w 7 hich has discarded the observance of 
the first day, though some others have dis- 
claimed its obligations, — to retain the original 
Jewish Sabbath, or, as it may be styled, the 
Sabbath of the Creation. 

When we consider that a day was blessed 
and hallowed, not first at mount Sinai, in the 
hearing of Moses, but at the very time w 7 hen 
the Almighty Creator suspended the operation 
of that power by which the worlds were made ; 
that the Sabbath was known and observed pre- 
vious to the giving of the ten commandments, 
as the regulations concerning the gathering of 
manna abundantly show ; that it has a place 
among the statutes, not of the ceremonial, but 
of the moral law, having its foundation, more 
evidently than almost any other of the com- 
mandments, in the unchanged moral and physi- 
cal nature of man ; and that the existence of 
sacred days, almost universally among the na- 
tions of the earth, affords proof both of its early 
and authoritative origin, and of its adaptation 



76 



SERMON IV. 



to the nature and wants of men, we cannot 
without an express revelation to that effect, 
blot it from the decalogue. Concerning that 
sacred collection of rules, which, if they had 
been obeyed, would, ere this, have restored the 
primitive Eden, and made it as wide as the 
world, it well becomes us to say with the ut- 
most reverence and solemnity, " what God hath 
joined together, let not man put asunder." 
Around this code of laws, as around the mount 
from which it was published, God hath set 
bounds. Let us beware how we " come near, 
to break through. 55 

We are thus led to another important ques- 
tion. It is the following : What evidence have 
w r e that while the commandment remains in 
force, the day has by divine appointment been 
changed, and that we are under the same obli- 
gations to remember and keep holy the first day 
of the week, as were the Jews to observe the 
seventh ? 

A little reflection will satisfy us that this 
change may have taken place, without in the 
least degree altering the nature or the validity 
of the command. It is often said that if the 
day is changed, the whole is changed ; and that 
if the seventh day is given up, the institution 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 77 



as an ordinance of God must be abandoned. 
But is this so ? Does all the importance of the 
institution depend upon its being still connected 
with that particular day, so that God could not 
indicate his will to have it changed without in 
effect repealing the command ? 

It will doubtless be readily admitted, that the 
fourth commandment, like the others, was given 
not for one part of the world merely, not for 
one parallel of latitude, or one section of the 
globe, but that it was adapted, w r ith admirable 
wisdom and kindness, to all situations in which 
mankind might be placed. But if all the obli- 
gation, and all the benefit, is connected with 
the observance of one particular day, what 
shall we say of those who dwell at the northern 
habitable extremity of the globe, w T ho instead 
of the diurnal distinctions which exist in the 
lower latitudes of the earth's surface, have in 
every year, one day and one night, each of 
several weeks duration ? The Sabbath in this 
respect as in others, was made for man, — for all 
men, — and if the simple design of the institu- 
tion is, that one seventh part of time should be 
set apart to the service of Him who gives us all 
our time, is there any difficulty in supposing it 
possible for Him to change the day without 



78 



SERMON IV. 



annulling the ordinance ? I think not. But 
has He done so ? 

That he has, might seem, at least, probable, 
from the occurrence of several remarkable and 
important events, connected with the early 
history of the church, on the first day of the 
week, by which it seems to have been design- 
edly marked as distinct from all other days. 
Of these, the principal was the resurrection of 
Christ. He was crucified on Friday, lav in the 
grave over the Jewish Sabbath, — the Sabbath 
of the Creation, — and, by selecting the first day 
of the week to witness his glorious rising, — the 
completion of his redeeming work, — He conse- 
crated that day as the Christian Sabbath, the 
Sabbath of the Resurrection. He chose that 
dav too. in more than one instance, as the time 
of showing himself to his disciples, after his 
resurrection and before his final ascension. 
And it was this day, instead of the Jewish Sab- 
bath, which was honored by the descent of the 
Holv Ghost. 

But the practice of the apostles and their co- 
temporaries, knowing entirely, as they must 
have done, the mind of Christ, is decisive re- 
specting the change. We have evidence, from 
the account of Paul's visit to Troas, in the 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 79 



twentieth chapter of Acts, that religious ser- 
vices, including the celebration of the Lord's 
Supper, were regularly attended by the disci- 
ples, on the first day of the week. From a 
passage in the first epistle to the Corinthians, 
we learn that the same day was appropriated, 
as it often is in Christian congregations in mod- 
ern times, to collections for charitable uses. All 
the directions of Paul in his epistles to the 
churches, concerning the observance of the 
Jewish Sabbath, show that he did not consider 
thai as binding upon them, although if they 
chose to observe both days, they might lawfully 
do so. There can be no doubt that the apostle 
John speaks of the Christian Sabbath in the 
first chapter of the book of Revelation, under 
the striking designation of the " Lord's day." 
We have, moreover, the testimony of many 
writers, both Christian, Jewish, and heathen, 
that the disciples in the earliest age of the 
church, were accustomed to meet on the first 
day of the week for divine worship, and espe- 
cially to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. 

Is it not plain then, that as the synagogue 
was exchanged for the church, and the altar 
with its sacrifices for the devotions and simple 
ordinances of the Christian sanctuary, so the 



80 



SERMON IV. 



Jewish Sabbath, itself an institution, not like 
those, of the ceremonial, but of the moral law, 
has been exchanged for the Christian Sabbath, 
the Sabbath of the resurrection. 

In this view how sacred and delightful to 
the Christian should be this holy day. If David 
could say of the other, " This is the day which 
the Lord hath made ; let us rejoice and be glad 
in it" how ought our hearts to exult at the re- 
turn of this. The first was in honor of the 
work of creation ; the second in honor of that 
greater work of redemption, in view of which 
w r e may suppose the angels of God to have 
been moved with a deeper sympathy, and to 
have filled heaven with more sublime praise, 
than at that first jubilee when the morning stars 
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted 
for joy. 

If then, instead of two Bibles, we have one 
Bible in two parts, with an unchanged moral 
code, remaining through both dispensations of 
the church, and if the practice of Christ, and of 
the apostles acting under his direction, followed 
w T ith scarcely an exception by the whole Chris- 
tian church for eighteen centuries, be consid- 
ered sufficient authority for the substitution of 
one day in the place of another, then may we 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 8l 



imagine ourselves addressed, with reference to 
the first day of the week, in the plain and em- 
phatic command, remember the Sabbath day to 
keep it holy. 

Before proceeding to some specifications as 
to the practical bearings of this commandment, 
let me call your attention to a passage in the 
prophecy of Isaiah, rendered more strikingly 
appropriate by being found in connection with 
one of those beautiful predictions of gospel 
times, in which the evangelical prophet de- 
scribes the blessedness of the church under the 
Messiah's holy and peaceful reign. " If thou 
turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from 
doing thy pleasure on my holy day ; and call 
the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, 
honorable ; and shalt honor him, not doing 
thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleas- 
ure, nor speaking thine own words : then shalt 
thou delight thyself in the Lord ; and I will 
cause thee to ride upon the high places of the 
earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Ja- 
cob, thy father ; for the mouth of the Lord 
hath spoken it." 

This passage, although it contains a plain 
declaration of the strictness and spirituality of 
the divine requisitions concerning holy time, 
and affords a decisive refutation of opinions 



82 



SERMO>" IV. 



often held respecting the Sabbath, as merely a 
day of rest and recreation, is still somewhat 
general in its language. This is true of most 
of the instructions of Holy Writ : general prin- 
ciples are laid down to be applied by christian 
discretion and a tender conscience to particu- 
lar cases. Duties are enjoined, as for exam- 
ple, those of benevolence, charity, forgiveness, 
and activity in the service of Christ, which it 
is the province of circumstances, aided by a 
sincere desire to do right, to enforce upon our 
attention from time to time. 

In answering the question then, " How 
ought we to keep the Sabbath day ?" — we are 
to be guided in part, by a due understanding of 
the object of the institution, and an application 
of the great principles on which it is founded 
to special cases. 

The design of the Sabbath is evidently two- 
fold : the honor of God : and the benefit of 
man. As to the first ; it is plain from many 
passages of scripture, that our Maker has de- 
signed to secure to himself, and to his works of 
Creation, Providence and Redemption, a rev- 
erent remembrance and commemoration. The 
Sabbath was also "made for man," in the two- 
fold sense that its rest was designed for the com- 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 83 



fort and health of his body, and its instructions 
and opportunities for devout thought were in- 
tended to elevate and purify his nobler nature. 

Guided by these general principles, and by 
such specific directions as the Bible contains, 
I proceed to lay down a few rules for christian 
Sabbath keeping. 

I. Those who would remember the Sab- 
bath day to keep it holy, must abstain as far 
as possible, from ordinary secular occupations. 

1. Labor. This is the universal lot of man. 
" By the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy 
bread," was God's original declaration to Adam, 
when he left Eden to become a tenant of the 
wide world. Although uttered as part of a 
malediction, it has become in the present state 
of man a blessing, rather than a curse. The 
idle have never been the most respected, or the 
most happy of the human race. Still, constant 
toil, whether bodily or mental, tends to ex- 
haustion, and ultimate dissolution. God has 
therefore provided a day of rest for the relief 
of wearied nature. " In it," He has kindly as 
well as peremptorily said, " thou shalt not do 
any work." But it is asked ; is this to be un- 
derstood literally ? Are not fires to be lighted, 
necessary food to be prepared, the comfort of 



84 



SERMON IV. 



inferior animals to be provided for. violence to 
be repelled, conflagrations to be resisted ? For 
all this we have warrant, both from the Old 
Testament and the Xew. Bat all labor which 
is not. strictly, according to the dictate of an 
enlightened and sensitive conscience, a work 
of necessity or of mercy, is equally forbidden 
by both. 

Here occurs the common question, respect- 
ing the care of the fruits of the earth ? Is it 
lawful for me. asks one. to gather on the Sab- 
bath that hay. or grain, or other product of 
agriculture, which is in danger of injury or de- 
struction if suffered to remain ? I answer. Xo. 
if the danger, results from the ordinary course 
of Providence, and might have been foreseen 
and avoided. If the lightning should strike 
my barn, it is my duty to do all in mv power 
to rescue it from the flames. If fire falls upon 
my field, and threatens to destroy the sheaves 
which cover it, it is right to remove them. 
But what excuse have I. if I voluntarily expose 
my crops to a known danger, resulting from 
the frequent showers of heaven, by cutting 
them down on Friday or Saturday, and then 
call it a work of necessity to gather them on 
the Sabbath ? It is a necessity of my own 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 85 



making ; and men might in this way make it 
necessary to break every command of the dec- 
alogue. 

Similar questions arise, which are to be 
answered on the same principles, respecting 
the care of other property. How often are 
ships sent to sea on this day, and even in many 
cases in preference to all other days ; a custom 
not at all to be excused from the fact, that the 
voyage must include several Sabbaths. When 
at sea, it is a work of necessity to proceed. 
But to choose God's holy day, for all the labor 
and bustle of leaving port, is to presume strange- 
ly upon the forbearance of Him who has said, 
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. My 
hearers, many have so made their calculations as 
to live and prosper, without insulting Him who 
gives them their crops, or their success in busi- 
ness, by using His holy time for their own pur- 
poses ; and those, who have thus made it neces- 
sary to labor on the Sabbath, have too often 
been insensibly led to its entire and unblush- 
ing desecration. Those who begin, by gather- 
ing their crops on the Sabbath in view of an 
approaching shower, generally learn to do it 
without remorse when no shower is in sight ; 
and the shop which was at first opened on that 
8 



86 



SERMON IV. 



day, only on special occasions, soon becomes 
the weekly herald of the Sabbath breaker's sin. 

2. Under the head of common occupations, 
I next mention journeying. Here, as in rela- 
tion to the last topic, the limit between the 
sinful and the lawful use of the Lord's day, 
must be fixed for every man by his own con- 
science. Walking or riding to some extent is 
necessary on this as on other days. Such is 
attendance on public worship, going to meet 
a dying friend, hastening at the call of misery, 
which cannot be denied immediate relief. But 
what would an enlightened conscience say, to 
such an arrangement of a journey, as to bring 
a part or the whole of the Sabbath within the 
allotted time, and to the consequent use of the 
day with the plea of necessity. What shall 
be said of the practice, common in many parts 
of the interior, of riding several miles on the 
Sabbath day to consult a physician, without 
any urgent necessity in the case, simply be- 
cause it is a day of leisure to the patient, whose 
malady has allowed him to devote the week, 
even up to Saturday night, to the usual pur- 
suits of gain or pleasure ? 

I will say nothing concerning the temporal 
advantages connected with honoring God in this 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 87 



respect ; though all history and experience jus- 
tify the assertion that if two men should com- 
mence a year's journey- one using six days in 
the week and the other seven, the former, oth- 
er things being equal, would be in a better con- 
dition, both as to progress and health, at the 
end of the year than the latter. The man who 
fears God, even if he knew that he should save 
much time and expense, by using holy time for 
his own journies, would neither dare nor wish 
to do it. 

On the subject of Sabbath travelling, so im- 
portant do I deem it, and so practical is it in a 
community like this, I cannot refrain from en- 
larging. It is matter of the deepest regret to 
every lover of his country, not to say, every 
lover of the will and law of God, that public 
sentiment should make it for the interest of the 
owners of our travelling conveyances, both by 
land and by water, so generally to disregard 
the Sabbath day. When God's holy day comes 
in the way of the plans of our steam-boat, and 
rail-road, and canal, and stage-coach, proprie- 
tors, it is generally pushed aside or trampled 
down with little, if any, reluctance. And since, 
owing to the weakness of the general senti- 



38 



SERMON IV. 



ment in favor of the Sabbath, it in most cases 
stands in the way of their plans and their 
interest, it is trodden down as if it were an or- 
dinance of a foreign usurper instead of the King 
of heaven. 

And yet if this were all, it would be com- 
paratively a trifling evil. The highways and 
the waters might, as now, be thronged by mul- 
titudes who fear not God, and the unceasing 
din of Sabbath desecration go up into the ears 
of the Lord of the Sabbath, — and though the 
scene would be appalling, and the amount of 
individual guilt very great, yet all would be, I 
had almost said, tolerable, if it included none 
but those who openly despise God and break 
most of his holy commands. 

But it is not so, my hearers ; and by far the 
most distressing circumstances connected with 
this order of things, is the temptation it otters 
to men who in general mean to respect the 
Sabbath, and even, I grieve and blush to say it, 
to professed christians, to break God's holy day, 
either in whole or in part. 

It is painful enough to the feelings of a chris- 
tian minister to be awakened on the Sabbath 
morning by the signals of arrival and departure 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 



89 



at the water side ; but to reflect that there are 
serious men in those crowds of passengers, — 
men who, when at home would never think of 
breaking the Sabbath, — christians even, who, 
tempted by the opportunity, and led astray by 
that strange argument, that they can enjoy the 
Sabbath as well in travelling as in a public house, 
besides the saving of a day, — are taking God's 
time, which they have in the most solemn man- 
ner promised to keep holy, and using it for the 
purpose of swelling the tide of Sabbath travel, 
and thus throwing their influence against the 
day, and in favor of the most unblushing of its 
desecrators, — this is too distressing — too heart- 
sickening to be borne. I do trust it has be- 
come almost a matter of history merely, — and 
yet I fear not wholly so. My brethren, my hear- 
ers, one and all, may not your Pastor appeal to 
you, plainly and earnestly, and beg of you to 
keep yourselves clean in this matter? 

Do any of you seriously doubt that it is wrong 
to take any part of God's time for needless 
purposes of convenience ? Is it right to take 
two or four or six hours, if we will only spare 
Him the rest ? Is it right to break that part of 
the Sabbath which comes in the night, if we 
8* 



90 



SERMON IV. 



will only observe the part which is by day-light ? 
Is it allowable to do a little wrong in respect to 
the fourth commandment, when we should not 
venture to do it concerning the sixth or the 
eighth ? What is to become of the Sabbath, if 
the church of God despise it? And who, my 
hearers, not members of the church, who will 
honor it, if you who show so commendable an 
interest in the support of religious institutions 
generally, should dishonor it: My heart has 
failed me, and I have felt for the moment 
as if I never could raise my voice again in de- 
fence of the Sabbath, when I have known that 
men from distant churches have come among us 
on the morning of God's holy day, — disturbing 
the sweet tranquillity of a summer Sabbath 
morning,— and in some cases on entering our 
Sabbath-schools, declining to perform those du- 
ties for which they truly said, their night-trav- 
elling had unfitted them. Brethren, friends, 
look at this matter, weigh it well, — and say, 
if any circumstances can justify a man in 
passing that portion of the night preceding 
the Sabbath, from midnight to four or six 
o'clock in the morning, in the way he must 
if he arrive here on Sabbath morning, — in- 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 



91 



eluding the example to fellow-travellers, per- 
haps hesitating as to a still more flagrant act 
of the same kind, the employment of means of 
conveyance from the wharf, and the interrup- 
tion to their usual conversation and arrange- 
ments of his family, — which would not equally 
justify him in taking his own vehicle and setting 
out on a journey on the morning of the Sabbath 
day. 

I esteem it more important than can well 
be described, that active business men, whether 
professors of religion or not, should set a high 
example in this matter. Need I add that I am 
anxiously desirous that this congregation, com- 
posed in so large a proportion of this class, 
should deserve the high distinction and exhibit 
the moral influence of a Sabbath keeping com- 
gregation ; and that their example should in- 
variably be upon the right side. That you all 
respect the Sabbath as a useful institution, I 
doubt not. Even infidel patriots and states- 
men have thus regarded and defended it. But 
believing, as I do, that it is also an ordinance 
of God, and knowing it is only in this point of 
view, that it has the moral power requisite to 
ensure its constant observance, in the face of 



92 



SERMON IV. 



fashion and convenience, and the desire of gain, 
I have wished to present it before you in this 
light, and to do all in my power to per- 
suade you to honor God's holy day, and thus to 
honor yourselves and bless vour countrv. What 
might not one congregation do in such a cause, 
by a firm and unyielding decision: — and with 
what joy would the minister of such a congre- 
gation contemplate their great and beneficial 
influence. 

8. The Sabbath is often broken by being 
devoted to ordinary reading and writing. This 
is sometimes considered a small matter. Many 
who would be quite unwilling to labor on the 
farm, or in the workshop, or to open their count- 
ing rooms, or to commence a journey, on the 
Sabbath day, feel at liberty in the seclusion of 
their own houses, to read secular books and 
newspapers, and to carry on ordinary correspon- 
dence. But where is the difference ? There 
is none, my hearers, that I know of : except 
that in the one case, the sin is public, and in 
the other private. But does not God judge 
righteous judgment ? Does He not see that 
secular book, that business letter, or that po- 
litical newspaper, by which you are casting 
contempt upon his own holy day ? 



THE FOUHTH COMMANDMENT. 



93 



I have called the sin of secular reading and 
correspondence on the Sabbath, a private sin, 
But there is a more public evil connected with 
it, which I cannot forbear to mention. I al- 
lude to the common practice, — I fear, increas- 
ingly common, — of visiting or sending to the 
post office on the Lord's day. Many christian 
families even, through some indirect agency of 
friends, perhaps rather tacitly allowed, than ex- 
pressly solicited, contrive to be in possession be- 
fore the Sabbath is past, of whatever the Sab- 
bath mail or the Sabbath post office delivery, — ■ 
those two great evils, — can bring to their hands. 
Thus in one way and another, the news of the 
day circulates almost as freely, and correspon- 
dence of various kinds is carried on almost as 
briskly, during the time which God has set 
apart for his own service, as during any other 
portion of the week. 

4. Common conversation is a frequent 
method of violating the sacredness of holy time. 
There is reason to apprehend, that God hears 
much, that is in this respect offensive to him. 
even in christian families. How few seem to 
remember that part of the prophet's description 
of a Sabbath keeping community, " not speak- 



94 



SERMON IV. 



ing their own words." Ministers, even, often 
have their thoughts involuntarily diverted from 
the subjects appropriate to their public and pri- 
vate duties, by the mistaken kindness of friends, 
who cannot forbear as they meet their pastor 
on the w r ay to the sanctuary, to communicate 
some item of information, perhaps of great im- 
portance, and for which on any other day he 
would be sincerely thankful. 

Under this head, let me also say, that it is 
exceedingly undesirable, that visits of friends, of 
only two or three days 5 duration, should be so 
arranged as to include a Sabbath ; so prone is 
the mind and the tongue to wander among the I 
many topics of family interest, or common 
friendship. 

Let it not be said that such a restriction upon 
social intercourse, as is implied in what has 
now been said, would make the Sabbath a 
gloomy day. The topics connected with chris- 
tian hopes, and christian enterprises, are abun- 
dant and interesting. Missionary efforts, relig- 
ious intelligence, christian biography, daily in- \ 
dividual experience of the goodness of God, 
and the weekly instructions of the sanctuary fur- 
nish so much and so various matter for con- 



FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 



95 



versation, that those families which are most 
conscientious in this respect, may be most 
cheerful and happy in their Sabbath morning 
and Sabbath evening circles. 

II. Another duty, connected with the christian 
Sabbath, is a regular and devout attendance 
upon public worship. That it has pleased God 
under both dispensations, to constitute this as 
one part of the due and acceptable keeping of 
the Sabbath, I need not take time to show. 
Whether we look at the prescribed practice of 
the ancient church, or at the example and in- 
structions of the apostles and primitive chris- 
tians, we have abundant evidence, that the day 
of God and the house of God were specially 
adapted and designed for each other. The 
Sabbath and the sanctuary have been joined 
together ; and it is in their union that God has 
chiefly blessed them to the good of men. 
When the church has most loved and best ob- 
served the former, she has most highly prized, 
and most diligently sought the latter. By the 
foolishness of preaching, it has pleased God to 
save believing sinners ; while saints have seen 
the glory of God in the sanctuary, and have 
been ready to echo the psalmist's declaration, 



96 



SERMON IV. 



" I was glad when they said unto me, let us go 
into the house of the Lord." 

Neglect of public worship, is, I need not say, 
a common and a great evil. It tends to lower 
the standard of sabbath keeping in the minds 
of all, especially of the young. No man, who 
needlessly absents himself from the house of 
God, keeps the sabbath properly in other re- 
spects ; and I regard the efforts which are now 
making to promote the more general attendance 
of the community in this country, at some 
stated place of religious worship, as having an 
important bearing upon the honor and obser- 
vance of the christian Sabbath, not less than 
upon the general interests of religion and good 
order. 

On this point, my hearers, I do not know 
that your minister has any special cause of com- 
plaint. Indeed, I have sometimes thought, 
that the number of our congregation was less 
affected by trifling causes, than is common in 
New-England. And yet does a summer 
shower, or a winter wind, or some slight indis- 
position, never keep you at home, when you 
might and ought to be at the sanctuary ? In 
such cases, ask yourselves if it would be right 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 



97 



for the minister to be absent for a similar cause ; 
or for all the congregation, if each one were in. 
the same circumstances with yourselves, to de- 
sert the sanctuary and leave him to preach to 
the walls. It is inexcusable and discouraging 
to a preacher, when any of his people, are 
detained from public worship by causes which 
would not interfere with their ordinary week 
day pursuits, either of business or of pleasure. 
A little reflection and observation will convince 
us, that this is by no means an uncommon case, 
even among professors of religion. Brethren 
and friends, let us never for any trifling cause 
neglect the assembling of ourselves together in 
the sanctuary of God. Here he has recorded 
his name. Here he bestows some of his 
choicest blessings ; and by a constant and rev- 
erent attendance at his earthly temple, w 7 e shall, 
thus far, remember the Sabbath day to keep it 
holy, and be preparing to spend an eternal Sab- 
bath in the temple made without hands. 

While upon the subject of public worship, let 
me say a word respecting the manner in which 
it should be attended. There is reason to fear 
that transgressions against the fourth command- 
ment are sometimes committed within the 
house of God, which are not less offensive in 
9 



98 



SERMON IV. 



His sight than more public desecrations of the 
Sabbath. David says, " Holiness becometh 
thine house, O Lord, forever." How often is 
this forgotten ! Worldly conversation on the 
steps of the sanctuary, together with slumber, 
significant nods, and even smiles within its 
walls are so many breaches of the fourth com- 
mandment, of which all ought to be both afraid 
and ashamed. We have as little right to turn 
the house of God into a place of amusement, as 
to make it a house of merchandize. 

III. The christian should prize and sanctify 
the Sabbath as a day of private devotion and 
spiritual progress. It is far from being sufficient 
in the sight of God, — it will not even satisfy 
ourselves, if our hearts are in any measure 
right,- — that we abstain from open violations of 
the Sabbath, and are punctual in our attendance 
at the sanctuary, and that our reading and con- 
versation have a religious cast. There is, — to 
use the language of a plain but discriminating 
christian, — a great deal of talk about religion 
which is not religious talk ; and even christians 
may converse and read and think, on subjects 
not strictly secular, which yet in the form in 
which they are presented to his mind, have no 
tendency to the accomplishment of the great 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 



99 



purpose to which the Christian's Sabbath should 
be devoted. He has a great work to do. He 
must grow in grace and prepare for Heaven. 
He has a race to run ; a warfare to accomplish; 
a journey to complete. For all this the Sab- 
bath is peculiarly fitted and designed. Great is 
his mistake, and irreparable his loss, if he neg- 
lects thus to use it. How desirable that every 
day of holy time, should, in a spiritual sense, 
witness the Christian's progress a Sabbath 
day's journey towards Heaven. 

It will be observed that I have said nothing 
respecting the question, When does holy time 
begin ? I esteem the answer both difficult and 
unimportant. It is the obvious design of the 
Head of the church, that one seventh part of 
the week, shall be religiously devoted, and 
that this shall include the day on which the 
Saviour rose. Had it been essential in His 
view, that this season of holy time should com- 
mence at the setting of the sun, or that the 
hour of midnight should mark its beginning, He 
would doubtless have so informed us. As it is, 
we have only to choose for ourselves which 
evening we will observe, and strictly and con- 
scientiously regard it. If I am not mistaken, 
however, those who consider the Sabbath eve- 



100 



SERMON IV. 



ning as secular time, will find it more difficult 
to consecrate an entire day, and will oftener find 
both evenings disturbed and desecrated by 
worldly cares, than those who regard the day 
as closing at midnight. The observance of 
both evenings as seasons of quiet reflection, 
while one is specially consecrated in the mind, 
is perhaps the most excellent way. 

As to the w T hole subject of Sabbath keeping, 
let me say, that in doubtful cases, it is best to 
err on the safe side. It were surely a less evil, 
to devote to the service of God a larger portion 
of time than he has claimed, or to consecrate it 
more strictly than he has required, than to rob 
Him of even the smallest portion of time or 
reverence which is his due. Something, too, 
should often be yielded for example's sake. 
Many things are lawful which are not expedi- 
ent ; and that lover of religion and good morals 
has but poorly learned the lesson of self-denial, 
"which the example of Christ inculcates, who is 
not willing to abstain even from what he con- 
siders an innocent use of holy time, when, by so 
doing, he can save the Sabbath from reproach 
in the view of an ungodly world. 

I close with a few remarks. 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 101 



1. Christendom is accumulating, a vast 
weight of criminality and consequent treas- 
ure of wrath, by the desecration of the Sab- 
bath. Of all the sins against God, which stain 
the history and mar the beauty of christian 
lands, this is most frequent, and perhaps most 
offensive in His sight. 

Look over the face even of our own land, the 
land of the Pilgrims, which still bears the im- 
press of their footsteps, and from which their 
Sabbath devotions ascended, warm from their 
hearts, acceptable incense to Heaven. See 
tens of thousands, filling the public convey- 
ances, which in defiance of the God of the 
Sabbath, are this day rolling along our high- 
ways, or traversing our lakes and rivers. Look 
at the thousands of mail transporters and post- 
masters, who in this christian land are obliged 
to break the high commands of Heaven, or give 
up their living. See the open and unblushing 
profanation of holy time by statesmen and leg- 
islators, for purposes both of private amusement 
and of public business ; — and then look at the 
fifty eighth chapter of the prophecy of Isaiah, 
and say whether our national sin in this matter, 
may not be one cause of our national difficulties 
and dangers. 

9* 



102 



SERMON IV. 



And if even here, within the enclosures of 
the American Zion, the Lord of the Sabbath 
sees so much to offend Him, what shall 
we say of the older and more corrupt com- 
munities of European Christendom ? But I 
forbear. We may not cast the first stone. I 
Mush for my own country, to know that a 
British parliament, through a large and re- 
spectable committee, devoted whole weeks to 
an investigation of the abuses of the Sabbath, 
while in this home of religion, this birth place 
of modern freedom, this garden of the world, as 
America, with as little modesty as truth, is 
often styled, tens of thousands of the citizens 
petitioned on the same subject during, the same 
year, only to be insulted, and abused, and driven 
with contempt from the halls of legislation. 

When God shall apply his line and his plum- 
met to all the nations of the earth, we have 
reason to anticipate that Sabbath breaking will 
occupy a place of fearful prominence, and that 
its share of retributive justice will be propor- 
tionably dreadful. Among the benign institu- 
tions of Christianity, — the instruments of moral 
elevation, and consequent national prosperity 
and individual happiness, — the Sabbath, even 
by acknowledgment of unbelievers, stands first ; 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 103 



and are we so secure in our civil liberties and 
social happiness, that we may venture to throw 
away the instruments by which God has enabled 
us to obtain these blessings ? Let the Sabbath 
be forgotten ; let the moral influence of one 
day's religious instruction in seven, be lost from 
among the influences at work upon the public 
mind ; let the next generation grow up with 
the example and with the habit of openly vio- 
lating this holy day ; and we shall see crime 
multiplying, and property losing value, and po- 
litical wrangling growing into civil war, and the 
judgments of heaven coming in streams of 
wrath upon us, as upon the head of Sabbath 
destroying France in the time of her weeks of 
ten days. Nor would it be long before this 
people, with all their boasted intelligence and 
liberty, would become unfit to govern them- 
selves, and some tyrant's hand be ready to build 
his throne. 

2. I call upon you, then, to promote in every 
possible way the observance of the Christian 
Sabbath. This is to be done by the decided 
and uniform influence and example of every 
man who fears God and loves his country. 
More is at stake upon the hazard of your influ- 
ence, than perhaps you are aware. It is in 



104 



SERMON IV. 



vain to recommend or command any duty to 
the degraded portion of society, which the more 
respectable do not practise. And can we say. 
my hearers, that we are without sin in this mat- 
ter ? Has our influence been decided, our ex- 
ample uniform and correct? Let us remember 
that the kind or even the degree of transgression 
is of little consequence. It matters not whether 
it be worldly business, or secular reading, or 
unnecessary travelling, or neglect of public 
worship, or trifling conversation, in which you 
indulge. All, all are wrong, if the Sabbath is 
God's day. And if it is not, then any or all 
the ten commandments may be erased to meet 
our wishes, or suit our convenience. 

I call upon you, then, as you believe the Bi- 
ble, and as you expect every word it contains 
of threatening against sin to be fulfilled ; — I 
call upon you as you love your fellow men, and 
as you pity the poor degraded beings, who fill 
some of our streets on this day, and are making 
themselves a pathway by their Sabbath crimes 
towards the prison and the gallows ; — 1 call up- 
on you as you love your country, and as you 
would have her saved from the certain doom of 
all nations which despise God, — to maintain, 
not gloomily or pharisaically, but yet, scrip- 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 105 



turallj and firmly, the sanctity of that day, 
which he hath hallowed and commanded us to 
remember and keep holy. 

Finally. The Christian will love and hon- 
or the Sabbath for its own sake. To one 
who is in a proper state of spiritual feeling, it 
would be as needless to urge the positive com- 
mand of God as a reason why he should observe 
this day as it would be to persuade a hungry 
man that it is his duty to eat. 

What a precious rest from secular toil ; — 
what a sheltered harbor from the waves of 
worldliness ; — what a spiritual feast-day to the 
earnest and improving christian. These sacred 
hours remind him of the ages of eternal happi- 
ness which he expects to enjoy. The tran- 
quillity and stillness which reign on every side, 
and which give, or used to give a New-Eng- 
land Sabbath a character so marked and 
memorable, how do they suggest to his mind 
the sweetness of that rest which remaineth for 
the people of God ! The crowded and solemn 
assembly, reminds him of the general assembly 
and church of the first-born, whose names are 
written in Heaven. The praises of the sanc- 
tuary, seem to him, an anticipation of the new 



106 



SERMON IV. 



song which the redeemed will sing, an appro- 
priate preparation for the sublime and glorious 
harmony that will resound through Heaven. 

To such a man, how precious is every hour. 
He never robs his Maker or himself by devoting 
an additional hour to sleep, or suffers a trifling 
excuse to keep him from the sanctuary. 

Are there any among this assembly, to 
whom the Sabbath is a dull day ; and who 
can make it tolerable, only so far as they de- 
part from the principles now laid down, as to 
the manner of its observance ? W e may easily 
imagine circumstances under which the Sabbath 
would wear a new aspect, and have connected 
with it a most deep and thrilling interest. 

Let us suppose that death has passed upon 
all the generations of men ; the earth consumed 
by fire ; the judgment passed ; and the change- 
less state of all the dead, whether in the abodes 
of light or of darkness, commenced. At some 
remote period in the progress of eternity, 
when the wicked shall have endured and the 
righteous have enjoyed, a length of existence 
answering to all the conceptions they ever had 
of eternity, — multiplied ten thousand fold, — 
a light, as of the dawning day, begins to glim- 



THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT. 107 



mer through that dreadful darkness which en- 
shrouds the lost. Hell stands aghast at the 
unwonted sight, and the agonies of remorse and 
mutual hate are almost forgotten for a moment, 
in busy conjectures as to the meaning of this 
strange phenomenon. What new era is ap- 
proaching in the annals of unending sorrow, 
what change is come over the spirit of that 
dream, yet not a dream, though like a dream in 
mystery and horror, which has lasted for so 
many successive cycles of ages ? 

As the dawning twilight increases, a voice is 
heard, the same which had first spoken on 
earth, and afterwards shook not the earth 
only, but also the heavens. It now stills the 
murmurings of the pit, as in loud and silvery 
tones it proclaims the beginning of one more 
Sabbath. The light increases. A glorious sun 
shines ; celestial envoys of hope and mercy, ra- 
diant with the accumulated holiness and love 
acquired by ages of heavenly life, are seen on 
every side. A rainbow spans the retreating 
cloud that has rolled up from off the face of the 
dark world. It is the bow of hope. Its bright 
colors are reflected in the wan faces where de- 
spair has so long sat enthroned. But enough. 



108 



SERMON IV. 



Suffice it to say, it is a Sabbath, with the same 
means, the same offers, the same facilities for 
salvation which we now enjoy, would it be a 
dull, a tiresome day ? How should we spend 
it ? 

Such a Sabbath, beloved friends, we shall 
never see. God grant that none of us may 
ever need to see it. But what ought we to 
do, what will w r e do, w 7 ith these precious Sab- 
baths ? I ought rather to say, with this, which 
may complete the long catalogue of our Sab- 
baths, and witness the closing of our earthly 
account. 



SERMON V. 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 

EXODUS 20 : 12. 

HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER • THAT THY DAYS 
MAY BE LONG UPON THE LAND WHICH THE LORD THY 
GOD GIVETH THEE. 

This is called in the epistle to the Ephesians, 
" the first commandment with promise ; " not 
meaning merely, as many children, and perhaps 
others, understand, the first commandment 
which has a specific promise connected with it, 
for it is in fact, the only one of this description, 
referring to its importance as shown by a 
promise. It is also the first command of the 
second table, enjoining a relative duty, that 
10 



110 



SERMON V, 



is, a dutv to our fellow-men. the first four hav- 
ing regard wholly to the Creator. It is, 
as was just said, the only promise recorded 
in the decalogue. Two of the command- 
ments are attended with general promises and 
threatenings ; but to this alone is a definite 
promise attached by way of motive to its fulfil- 
ment. Let us thank God that he has given 
this special sanction to a command based upon 
one of the purest principles which the Fall has 
left among the foundations of human character : 
a command which is destined in its turn to be 
the basis of that reverent regard for things holy 
and venerable, which will he the frame work 
of a new. regenerated, human character, when 
the desecrated earth and her sinful inhabitants 
shall be again pronounced - very good/ 

In such a light do I regard this duty of filial 
respect and obedience, as not only one of the 
best elements of individual character, but lying 
at the foundation of all those conservative 
habits and influences, which form the safety 
of the world, that I can hardly bring myself to 
occupy the time allotted to this discourse, by 
entering so fully into the detail of its practical 
bearings upon those who are yet children, as 
might be best, even for the most salutary im- 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 



Ill 



pression of the command itself upon all our 
minds. 

Family anarchy is one of the greatest curses 
God ever permitted to fall upon civilized society. 
In savage life, it would prove instant annihila- 
tion to all society. Hence an instinct there 
supplies the place of law, and although the 
aged and infirm parent is sometimes destroyed 
by violence, and oftener turned out by the road- 
side to die of hunger and exposure, yet, in in- 
fancy and childhood a stern and even bloody 
authority is maintained. Perhaps this very 
sternness and absoluteness of parental power, 
extending as it often does in savage and even 
semi-barbarous nations, to the control of the 
life as well as the actions of the child, may in 
its excess prepare the way for the horrid retali- 
ation just mentioned : so that parricide is the 
dreadful progeny of infanticide. But this pa- 
rental control, however abused, tends to keep 
society together. It would be easy to show 
that without parental authority there would be 
no authority ; and how long a community can 
exist in a state of total anarchy, the history of 
the world plainly shows. 

We often find a mark of divine wisdom in 
such an ordering of natural causes and relations, 



112 



SERMON V. 



that they shall exert a strong influence upon 
those of a moral kind. Of this we have an in- 
stance here. Man, unlike all other animals, 
passes through a long period of helpless depen- 
dence, before he is capable of taking care of 
himself. This period varies, in the case of the 
inferior animals, but is in all comparatively 
short. The beasts of the field and the fowls of 
the air, after intervals varying from a few days 
to a few weeks, are seen to possess both the 
muscular strength and the natural instinct of 
their several species. They walk, or swim, or 
fly ; they seek and devour their food; they 
pursue their enemies, or fly from them ; they 
construct, some of them, commodious habita- 
tions ; and in short, act the part assigned 
them in the scale of animated nature, as readily 
and as perfectly a few weeks, or days, or even, 
some of them, a few hours, after they begin to 
exist, as ever. Hence there is no necessary, 
permanent connexion with the parent. All 
interest and even recognition soon ceases, and 
the new comer, after a brief and slight intro- 
duction to the world he is to inhabit, is left to 
follow his own instinct, and if I may so say, to 
act for himself ; and though he can make no 
improvement upon the intelligence or the habits 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 



113 



of his predecessors for centuries before, he is at 
least in no danger of falling short of the uni- 
form standard of the species to which he belongs. 

Not so with man. For many months he is 
absolutely, physically helpless ; and for several 
years, intellectually so. His period of infancy 
is long. No degree of attention and education 
can materially abridge it. Left to himself, he 
would starve and die. The instinct of paren- 
tal love, not suspended as it is in the brute cre- 
ation at an early period, because it is no longer 
necessary, continues undiminished ; and by its 
great strength and uniformity, together with 
the self-denying acts of patient care to which 
it prompts, both constitutes and enforces a 
claim for submission and reverence on the part 
of its protected and dependant object. 

I have spoken of a claim. But let it be re- 
membered, this claim must be understood and 
asserted by the parent, or it becomes practically 
null and void. The principle of reverence and 
obedience, though not wholly a stranger to the 
human heart, yet lies in a manner dormant, and 
is subject to the counteraction of other and 
strong impulses. Lying thus half buried in the 
infant breast, nothing is easier than for the pa- 
rent, by a mild, yet firm and uniform exercise 
10* 



114 



SERMON Y. 



of authority, to call it forth and develope it ; 
but let him suffer it to remain undisturbed, 
by never demanding its exercise, — that is, 
by never commanding any thing, — or let him 
by violent, and unreasonable, and contradictory 
commands, lacerate the feelings, and outrage 
the reverent sensibilities of the child, — and in 
either case he has himself to blame that his 
child is not respectful and dutiful. 

But let us look more distinctly at the mean- 
ing of the language in which the fifth command- 
ment is given. "Honor thy father and thy 
mother." The original word rendered " honor," 
is derived, from a word signifying weight, — 
thence figuratively, dignity ; thence the word 
in our text, to treat with respect, to give proper 
deference. An apostle by way of commentary 
upon this command, says, " Children obey your 
parents in all things, for this is w T ell pleasing to 
the Lord ; " and again, " Children obey your pa- 
rents in the Lord, for this is right." The 
striking language of the wise man, which every 
child, and especially every disobedient, disre- 
spectful child, ought to remember, has some 
explanatory bearing upon the subject : u The 
eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth 
to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 



115 



shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall 
eat it." 

The language then of the text, with these 
indirect scriptural explanations of its import, 
demands of children such respect, and submis- 
sion, and obedience toward their parents, as the 
parental and filial relations may justly claim. 
It is such honor as is appropriate to the condi- 
tion, that God requires of those who are in the 
condition. The command is not an arbitrary 
one, nor, as such, defined with exactness. It is 
rather an allusion to a natural instinct, and a 
requisition of suitable regard to be given to the 
voice of that instinct. We have only to ask, 
then, in what relation the child does by the 
ordinance of the God of nature, stand to the 
parent, in order to know what measure of love 
and obedience is due in that direction. And 
how should such a question be answered ? 

I reply, the parent is to the child during ex- 
treme infancy as a visible divinity. God has 
made the parent the instrument or agent, under 
His own supreme and controlling providence, 
not only in the existence of the child, but in its 
preservation and growth, until it shall not only 
have some power to take care of itself, but 
also capacity to imagine another being, — the 



116 



SERMON V. 



real Deity from whom the deities of its infant 
imagination, viz. its parents, received their au- 
thority to control, and their power to protect it. 
Thus thrown by Providence into the care of 
those to whom under Providence it owes its 
existence, the child naturally looks up to them : 
their wisdom suggests its only idea of omni- 
science; their power is, to its view, omnipotence; 
their example its standard of right ; their au- 
thority, if properly held, is undisputed ; and 
in short, the infant's idea of its parent, so soon 
as it has ideas of any thing, may be imagined to 
resemble the chiles idea of God. 

During this early period, which may be called 
the minority of the soul — while as yet no sense 
of duty can exist, instinct and necessity seem to 
supply its place, and the child both honors, 
loves, fears, and trusts, its parent as its superior, 
as its divinity. This is right, for God has or- 
dained it ; — though I cannot forbear here to say 
that it invests the parent with a fearful respon- 
sibility ; since these early impressions, made if 
not remembered, upon the young and susceptible 
mind, at an age perhaps earlier than we are ac- 
customed to suppose, may form the elements of 
character, and even give a strong bias to the 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 



117 



moral sense in its gradual and mysterious de- 
velopement. 

But to return. If the parent is the infant's 
divinity, both for protection and restraint, that 
infant mind should at the earliest possible period 
be taught to look beyond these vice-gerents of 
Heaven, to a Creator and Ruler who made and 
governs both its parents and itself. When this 
lesson begins to be learned, the parent is not de- 
graded, though God is exalted. As, when the 
traveller " sees Alps on Alps arise,' 5 the snowy 
peak which just now seemed to hide its head in 
the clouds, above all its fellows, appears no 
lower or less majestic, when rolling vapors dis- 
close the monarch of the hills towering high 
above all the rest. 

What a breaking in of light, w ? hat an en- 
larging of the child's spirit, at that moment, 
— never to be discovered by others, or remem- 
bered by himself, when first he conceives of a 
being superior to his parent, who made them, 
and feeds them, and clothes them, and governs 
them, as they do him! Still he honors them. 
Still under God, he depends upon them. Still, 
until he is of mature age and understanding, he 
is to obey them, with only a single condition, 



118 



SERMON V. 



expressed by the apostle when he says, " Chil- 
dren obey your parents in the Lord/' The 
parent is no longer his God. There is another, 
and He must be obeyed. We all admire, in- 
stead of blaming, the disobedient child, who 
having been taught that God has said " Thou 
shalt not steal, V refuses to obey the unworthy 
parent who commands dishonesty. But with 
this condition, the child is to honor and obey 
the parent as still occupying a place subordinate 
only to God and assigned by Him. 

To make it more plain that all this is not an 
accident, but comes in the established train of 
the divine plans, we have only to remember 
that God is our father and that we are his chil- 
dren. He has used this illustration as the one 
most befitting the case. He says to his rebel- 
ious children, " If I be a father where is mine 
honor," thus teaching us that the literal and 
finite father, as well as the infinite, has a claim 
to reverence. Thus the necessity for filial de- 
pendence and respect in infancy, changes with 
advancing childhood and youth, to a duty. The 
foundation, deeply laid beneath the surface, 
among the invisible and chaotic elements of 
character disturbed and disarranged by the fall, 
rises gradually to view, and is prepared for a no- 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 



119 



ble superstructure, to be fashioned by the divine 
hand* with human instruments, of all that is fair 
and reverent. The degree of dependence, both 
bodily and mental, gradually diminishes, until 
the time arrives, generally in civilized countries 
fixed by law, when the child is prepared to take 
his place in society, and no claim remains on 
the part of the parent but one of gratitude and 
respect, due to such services rendered, and to 
such a character and age, as those of an elderly 
a;nd venerable parent. Thus begins and grows 
the duty and the habit of filial piety, words 
d-eserving to be written in letters of gold. 

And now let us look at the promise : " That 
thy days may be long in the land which the 
Lord thy God giveththee." This is simply an 
implied assurance of long life to those who 
should obey the fifth commandment. But are 
we to look upon it as a literal promise, with an 
exact and uniform fulfilment ? Are we to un- 
derstand the Great Lawgiver as declaring that 
those who obey their parents shall in all cases 
live longer than those who are disobedient ? I 
think not. The promise evidently had primary 
reference to the condition and prospects of the 
children of Israel at that time. They were 
journeying to the promised land. It was the 



120 



SERMON V. 



land which the Lord their God was about to 
give them. And He assures them that their 
permanence and prosperity, in that expected 
and much desired possession, would depend 
upon their attention to this command. I sup- 
pose that herein He distinctly recognized 
the natural connexion between a due de- 
gree of reverence, and the prosperity, and 
even the peaceful existence of society ; rev- 
erence, primarily to parents, as the earliest 
possible object thereof. — next to God, as the 
father of all, — and thence to the " powers that 
be, which are ordained of God.*' I consider 
this clause as the statement of a fact as well as 
a distinct promise, and instead of its needing 
a particular act of God's hand to fulfil it, I sup- 
pose that He must have changed the whole 
course of social nature in order to prevent its 
fulfilment. The repetition in Deuteronomy 
explains the nature of the promise, — that thy 
days may be prolonged, and that it may go well 
with thee/' The mere physical effect of an 
early habit of respect and reverence to our nat- 
ural superiors, by restraining the passions, 
and promoting a quiet, gentle demeanor and 
sentiment, would be highly favorable to longer- 
ity ; and it needs little argument to show that 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 121 



it could not long " go well" with any commu- 
nity where this first and great commandment of 
the second table was despised. 

The view now taken is fully in accord- 
ance with that most excellent compencl, to 
which I have already more than once referred 
in illustrating the decalogue. It says, " The 
fifth commandment requireth the preserving the 
honor, and performing the duties, belonging to 
every one in their several places and relations, 
as superiors, inferiors, or equals ; and it forbid- 
deth the neglecting of, or doing any thing against 
the honor and duty which belongeth to every 
one in their several places and relations." It 
is true, parents only are specified in the statute, 
but who needs to be informed, that in early 
reverence or contempt for the parent's authority, 
is to be traced the origin of permanent char- 
acter and habits as to all reverence. No won- 
der that the civil law of the Jews, framed as it 
was by God himself, punished undutifulness to 
parents, as the egg which if not destroyed would 
break forth into the viper of scornfulness and 
treason ; scornfulness and treason against the 
divine King, as well as against his human vice- 
gerents and their administration. 



122 



SERMON V. 



To children and youth, let me earnestly and 
affectionately apply the subject. 

My young friends; — God never lays any com- 
mands upon His creatures which it is not for 
their interest and happiness, as well as their du- 
ty, to obey. He has commanded you to honor 
your father and your mother. Have you done 
so ? I will not ask if you have openly despised 
and insulted them. I should be sorry to think 
it possible of any of these children, — in a Chris- 
tian land, — in a Christian congregation,— most 
of them in a Sabbath School,— that they should 
treat their parents with that scorn and disre- 
spect which we sometimes see among the igno- 
rant and abandoned. 

But there are other ways of dishonoring pa- 
rents* You dishonor them if you do not obey 
them constantly, quickly, and cheerfully. Chil- 
dren sometimes obey at one time, and disobey 
at another ; they obey, after being told several 
times ; they obey with frowns, and with whis- 
pered words of discontent. This is not honor- 
ing your father and your mother. God has giv- 
en them authority over you. This they exer- 
cise, I presume wisely and kindly, though firm- 
ly. To this you must submit. They will not, 
like some wicked parents, tell you to do wrong, 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT, 



123 



to steal, or to speak falsehoods ; — and what they 
tell you, you should do quickly and cheerfully, 
When I go into a house, and see children frown- 
ing when bidden to do a thing, and either refus- 
ing to do it, or doing it after many commands 
and much urging, I wish to ask them whether 
they have ever learned the fifth commandment. 

But obedience is not all. You ought to re- 
spect your parents, and to speak to them in a 
becoming manner. Even if they are very kind, 
and permit you to approach them very familiarly, 
you should never forget that they are your su- 
periors in age and in wisdom, and above all 
that they are your parents. To them you ewe 
your existence : — and many a sleepless night 
and anxious hour have they passed on your ac- 
count before you were old enough to know any 
thing about it. They deserve to be treated 
kindly and respectfully, They expect it. Above 
all God commands it. 

And let me sav a word to all the young, in- 
eluding those who have begun to act for them- 
selves, respecting the feelings and treatment 
proper towards parents in the decline of life. 
Your obligations and their just claims, my young 
friends, do not terminate with childhood ; nor 



124 



SERMON V. 



do they end when adult years begin. The 
parental relation itself, is a great thing, so that 
even negligent and unworthy parents, who have 
made their children to blush for them, should 
never be made to blush for, or by, their chil- 
dren. Like that considerate son of old, we 
should seek to conceal rather than to expose the 
faults and infirmities of those who gave us 
being: — -and while they live, even if they should 
forget that they are parents, we should never for- 
get that we are their children. Whatever sac- 
rifices your filial piety may incur, remember 
that thev are all due to those, between whom 
and yourselves such a relation subsists, and 
by whom in most cases such weighty and un- 
numbered favors have been conferred. 

O that God would cause all these children 
and youth to feel their solemn obligations to 
love and obey their parents, while under their 
control, and while they live to respect and 
honor them, — so that all the blessings promised 
or implied in the text, may be theirs* And let 
me again repeat in the hearing of those child- 
ren the fearful words of King Solomon : " The 
eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth 
to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley 
shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 



125 



it." This, my dear children, is figurative lan- 
guage, but it has a solemn and a fearful mean- 
ing. May there be no disobedient, scorn- 
ful children among you ! Such, God will nei- 
ther love, nor bless. 

To parents, let me say : If it is the duty of 
children to obey, it is yours, to command. 
This, I have been lead to suppose, many pa- 
rents never do. Indeed if all parents had done 
so for the last generation, we should never have 
heard either of mobs or of non-resistance soci- 
eties, those extremes which meet in a common 
centre, of wild, disorganizing fanaticism. I re- 
peat it, my hearers, God has made it the duty 
of parents to command, — not only to have a 
will, and to make it known in the name of 
counsel and advice, and to find fault if it be not 
obeyed, but to enforce it. I have said, that the 
parent is the child's first divinity. Home is his 
world. The domestic administration gives him 
the first idea of law T and restraint. God has 
made it necessary for him to feel the force of 
law, both divine and human ; and from the pa- 
rental government his first and strongest im- 
pressions of government must come. 

Now suppose there is no such thing as paren- 
tal government shown to him, or exercised over 
11* 



126 



SERMON V. 



Mm ; that he begins to act his own pleasure 
without restraint, and goes on to do so, with 
now and then a passionate and ineffectual at- 
tempt from his parent to control him, perhaps, 
too, in a matter of mere selfish convenience on 
the part of the parent, and not of high sacred 
moral principle, such as a question of honesty 
or of truth. What is the result ? This feeble 
effort is like an insufficient enclosure around 
a field, which only tempts and accustoms the 
unruly herd to break in* 

The child thus without domestic law, grows 
up unconscious of legal restraint. He now 
forms habits of independence, which neither di- 
vine nor human control can afterwards wholly 
break. If he had awaked to consciousness in 
an atmosphere of domestic law, where certain 
things must be done, and certain others must 
not , — where commands like those of the Medes 
and Persians in firmness, though mild and rea- 
sonable, were constantly enforced, — he would 
have become accustomed to restraint. When 
the commands of God began to press upon his 
conscience their high and holy claims, he would 
have quietly yielded, though not without that 
reluctance of heart which is coextensive with 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 127 



the effects of the Fall ; and when attending to 
necessary education, the requisitions of a school 
teacher or of a tutor would have found from him. 
not perhaps a cheerful, but at least an unresisting 
submission. So in later life ; as a citizen, he has 
a habit of subordination ; if under a monarchy, 
he respects his sovereign ; if in a republic, he 
respects those, even, whom his own voice has 
helped to elevate, and viewing them as for the 
time not his servants, but his lawful rulers, 
obeys their laws, and seeks only a legal and a 
timely mode of relief, if he deems those laws 
unjust or unwise. 

In a word, he has reverence in his mental 
constitution. The aged, the venerable, those 
in authority, the laws, in short, the rights and 
interests of common humanity he respects. 
He is no slave. He may be a warm lover and 
an ardent advocate of liberty. But he is no 
disorganize!'. He is no despiser of God, nor 
contemner of men. He has within him some 
of that true reverence, which alone gives a man 
any true self-respect, and which alone keeps 
the moral and social world together, as the 
gravitating and centripetal power holds the 
physical world together, and binds with no ty- 
rannical but most beneficent sway continents 



128 



SERMON V. 



and islands and mountains and oceans, in one 
consolidated mass. But the child who never 
learns at home that his own will is not supreme 
law, and that he may not in all cases do as he 
pleases, what foundation is there in his mind, 
either for the fearing of God, or a proper re- 
gard to man ? What wonder that if he obeys 
not his father whom he has seen, he should dis- 
obey his God whom he has not seen ? What 
wonder that he should be a troublesome school- 
boy, and a turbulent youth, and that in man- 
hood he should either turn rioter, break the 
laws under pretence of supplying their defects, 
or with the avowed purpose of setting them at 
defiance,— or that in a more respectable way he 
should aim to subvert law, by joining some as- 
sociation declaring it wrong for any human 
being either to exercise or submit to any hu- 
man authority whatever ? There is no won- 
der, my hearers. Family anarchy is a root 
strong enough to bear all these branches and 
many more. It springs up in the cradle, and lo ! 
its boughs already overspread and darken the 
land. 

I appeal to you, then, as Christians, as lovers 
of your species, — nay, as lovers of your own 
safety and peace, to seek to stay that process 



THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT. 129 



by which reverence is fast becoming an obso- 
lete word, and the thing it signifies, a matter of 
history merely. 

In this fifth commandment, short and simple 
as it is, I find the seminal principle of all rev- 
erence. In the narrow but fertile soil of the 
nursery this plant is to germinate, which after- 
wards transplanted and nurtured, is to bless and 
preserve society. 

I advocate no domestic tyranny, but I depre- 
cate domestic anarchy. Parental love is gen- 
erally a sufficient safeguard against the former ; 
— it too often degenerates into the latter. Yet 
the wise man tells us that to spare restraint is 
to hate the child. Practically it is so. And 
the disobedient, self-willed children and youth 
who are growing up with a contempt for paren- 
tal wishes, may possibly live to see that it had 
been better for themselves as well as for others^ 
if they had been compelled in childhood to yield 
their own wills to the will of a wise and affec- 
tionate parent. 

Finally, let all, whether parents or children, 
young or old, remember that it is true of this 
and of every other command of the Bible, as is 
expressly declared concerning the third com- 
mandment, that " the Lord will not hold him 



130 



SERMON V. 



guiltless who " transgresseth. His laws are 
something more than good advice which may be 
neglected with impunity. Let us neither hope 
nor fear under His government, mild and pa- 
rental as it is 5 any of the weaknesses of an over- 
fond father. " God cannot be deceived, and 
He will not be mocked." 5 



SERMON VI. 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 

EXODUS 20 : 13. 
THOU SHALT NOT KILL, 

" This commandment at least, have I kept from 
my youth up," I seem to hear one and another 
of my hearers exclaim. And yet the Apostle John 
says, " He that hateth his brother is a murder- 
er ; " and the Saviour, commenting upon this 
very commandment, speaks of him " that hateth 
his brother without a cause," as transgressing 
its spirit, though he offend not against the letter 
of the law. 

I make these remarks at the outset, that you 
may not put yourselves into that most profitless 
posture, not less so than one of slumber or of 



132 



SERMON VI. 



total inattention, — I mean, a posture of hearing 
wholly for others. Some of you may have 
already thought that such a subject would be 
exceedingly appropriate in a state-prison chapel, 
or in some vaulted gallery into which open the 
cells of the condemned, and that it in no man- 
ner concerns yourselves. 

But, my hearers, no subject in all the Bible 
ought to be thus regarded. All scripture is 
profitable, either for doctrine or reproof, or cor- 
rection, or instruction in righteousness. It was 
given by inspiration of God, not to angels, but 
to men. and however the direct application of 
the letter may seem to pass us by, as do the 
exhortations concerning the treatment of mas- 
ters and of kings — still the spirit of every com- 
mandment is worthy of our attention. Let me 
hope then for your careful hearing, while I at- 
tempt to explain the grounds, the meaning, and 
the practical bearings of the sixth commandment. 

I first remark that the nature of the case, to- 
gether with other passages of the scripture 
seems to limit the prohibition, to the taking of 
human life. I am not aware that it has ever 
been understood differently ; though some hea- 
then superstitions, particularly among the Hin- 
doos, may possibly have originated in a vague 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 133 

tradition respecting this commandment. A 
devotee of great sanctity, once being assured by 
a missionary, that notwithstanding his scruples 
against destroying animal life, he did of ne- 
cessity, in every draught of water which he 
took, and in every morsel of some kinds of food 
which he ate, swallow and destroy thousands 
of animalcule, replied that he w 7 as provided 
by the Creator with a natural network in his 
throat, of so minute texture, that no such event 
could occur. Another is reported to have 
crushed with his foot the microscope which de- 
monstrated to him the same fact. 

But this notion of the Brahmin finds no 
echo in Christian lands ; and while the sixth 
commandment may suggest a caution as to the 
needless and wanton destruction of any animal 
life which the Author of nature has seen fit 
to enkindle, the prohibition guards only the 
life of man. This alone, of all terrestrial life, 
is said to be the breath of God. " He breathed 
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man be- 
came a living soul." Such life, as we might 
reasonably suppose, is not to be trifled with. 
Its great Author has invested it with a sacred- 
ness which nothing else on earth possesses. 
Our own life and that of others, even the hum- 
12 



134 



SERMON VI. 



blest of our race, outweighs in our natural, un- 
perverted estimation, any amount of treasure, 
or the lives of inferior animals. Who of us 
would ever think of hesitating in such an alter- 
native ? The destruction of human life, how 
strongly and painfully it affects us ! What hor- 
rors surround death, in all its forms, when it 
gains a human victim to its power! The speak- 
er well remembers the shudder with which, 
many years since, he saw the dead body of a 
poor inebriate lying in the snow, where she had 
perished with cold, having aroused the attention 
of himself and others by her shrieks for aid, 
which were however, too feeble and indistinct to 
cause any alarm. A noble horse, or a faithful 
dog, might have suffered as much, and might 
have been a greater loss to the world ; but a 
score of these animals, lying dead, would not 
have awakened a tithe of the horror caused by 
that single spectacle. 

A part of this strong sensitiveness on the sub- 
ject of human life, is no doubt caused by our 
belief in immortality, and especially in proba- 
tion here, to be followed by retribution hereaf- 
ter. The great principle of Revelation, often 
assailed, but never overthrown, " Whatsoever a 
man soweth that shall he also reap," naturally 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



135 



invests the moment when the seed-time ends, 
and the eternal harvest begins, with peculiar 
importance. The certainty that when we, or 
our fellow-beings, even the humblest, or the 
youngest, or the most degraded and useless, 
shut our eyes upon this world, we open them 
upon another, and learn the secrets of the grave, 
and enter upon a new and unchanging condition 
of life, is enough of itself to make death a se- 
rious thing. 

But without attempting farther to account 
for the feeling, we may assume that there is a 
feeling, in every human breast, which accords 
with the spirit of the sixth commandment. 
And yet so many are the motives, and provoca- 
tions, and facilities, for destroying life, both our 
own and that of others, that the Great Author 
of life has seen fit to add to the voice of con- 
science that of Revelation, and to say expressly : 
Thou shalt not kill. A single glance at the 
heathen world, where only very indistinct no- 
tions of immortality attach far less importance 
to life than it wears to the view of those who 
regard it as a period of probation, will be suffi- 
cient to show that this command was not given 
in vain. Nay, the history of Christendom de- 
monstrates the same truth, both by the single 



136 



SERMON VI. 



murders, and by the extensive slaughters, which 
it records. 

But what is the meaning of the statute ? 
Does it forbid all taking of human life ? So 
it has been interpreted by some. They regard 
all killinsfas murder. Not onlv defensive war, 
but private resistance to an assassin, and even 
the course of justice under human laws which 
require blood for blood, have been sometimes 
classed under the same head, and regarded as 
so many infringements of the sixth command- 
ment. 

Far be it from me to weaken in the slightest 
degree, in any heart, that regard for human life, 
that horror in view of its destruction, which is 
so deeply laid among the elements of our moral 
nature, and which, as I have already hinted, is 
likely to have the happiest influence on our re- 
ligious feelings. But all excessive views on 
any subject seem to me even more pernicious in 

the end, than those which are partial and de- 
fective. They beget prejudices against the real 
truth, which years will not efface, and, calling 
into exercise what may be styled the antagonist 
principles of human nature, lead other men to 
the opposite extreme. 

Concerning the right and duty of human gov- 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



137 



ernments to take life by way of punishment, 
my own mind is at rest, when! remember that 
the same Being who has said, " Thou shalt not 
kill," has also said, u Whoso sheddeth man's 
blood, by man shall his blood be shed.' 5 Are 
these two commands contradictory ? By no 
means. How plain, on the other hand, that the 
latter is the result of the former. It is by way of 
enforcing it, of deterring men from its transgres- 
sion, and of showing more strongly than could 
be shown in any other way, His abhorrence of 
murder, that the Deity has made it punishable 
with death. 

I know it is a solemn, a dreadful thing, to 
take the life of a human being. God meant it 
should be ; and it might be asked why, if He 
intended that one life should pay the forfeit of 
another, He did not see fit to take it himself, 
by lightning from Heaven, or by sudden dis- 
ease, or by some miraculous blow. It is enough 
to say, He has otherwise directed ; and that by a 
command which cannot be shown to partake of 
the temporary character of the ceremonial law of 
the Jews, he has appointed man as the execution- 
er of this high and awful sanction. Perhaps He 
designed the very horror which would be awak- 
ened at the bare contemplation of such a duty 3 
12* 



138 



SERMON VI. 



to increase the reverence for human life, and to 
strengthen the binding power of the sixth com- 
mandment. 

Let it not be said that such destruction of 
human life is but increasing the evil, and send- 
ing another soul, perhaps unprepared, from time 
into eternity. Such limited views men often 
take ; God, never. If His infinite wisdom sees 
that for every score of murderers who pay their 
lives as a forfeit to the offended laws of God 
and man, an hundred other lives will be saved, 
who will deny that there is not benevolence in 
the arrangement ? However, as I said before, 
so He has ordained ; and we cannot deny the 
right of a human government to put this law in 
force, without denying its right to control the 
liberty, or to tax the property of those who are 
its subjects. 

I regard a denial of the lawfulness of capital 
punishment, though proceeding in many cases 
from an amiable humanity, as involving the 
most dangerous principles, and tending to set 
aside all government. The same I feel com- 
pelled to say, of extreme views concerning 
peace and non-resistance. To forbid a nation 
to save herself from rapine and slaughter by 
force of arms, or to require an individual to 



J 



THE 



SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



139 



submit tamely to the blows of the assassin, 
when he has the means of defending himself, 
is in my view to give the good into the hands 
of the bad. in a way which the God of Providence 
never intended, and against which, since the Fall 
introduced sin and discord into the world, He has 
expressly provided. When the choice is, be- 
tween killing another and being killed yourself, 
I know 7 of no law which obliges you to prefer 
the latter. It seems to me as wrong to commit 
suicide as murder. We are not commanded 
to love our fellow-men better than ourselves; 
and while we should all be guardians, to a cer- 
tain extent, of each other's lives, I think we 
owe a first duty to our own. Of what use 
would it be that a government may make laws, 
if it may not enforce them ? The former 
right is seldom denied, — indeed never, except 
by those whose views on the latter point com- 
pel them for consistency's sake to become " no 
government," as well as " non-resistance " 
men. 

Let it not be said that thus taking one life to 
save another, is doing evil that good may come. 
Nothing can be called evil which the Bible jus- 
tifies, and even expressly enjoins. 



140 



SERMON VI. 



But we have dwelt long enough upon the 
negative part of this subject. If the sixth 
commandment does not forbid judicial sen- 
tences of death for murder, or for acts, like mid- 
night arson and a few others, manifestly en- 
dangering life, and therefore tending to murder ; 
if it does not forbid defensive war, whereby a 
nation may protect its inhabitants from violence, 
and itself from being overturned ; if it does not 
forbid private self-defence against the villain 
who compels me to choose between homicide 
and suicide, (and it should be remembered that 
all the commands of Christ, respecting turning 
the other cheek, and the like, had reference to 
injustice and violence, which might be at- 
tempted, but not to murder,) the question still 
recurs, what is forbidden by the sixth command- 
ment ? The wise men whose words I have 
so often quoted, answer this question briefly as 
follows : " The sixth commandment forbiddeth 
the taking away of our own life or the life of 
our neighbor unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth 
thereunto.' 5 

Assuming this as the best and most compre- 
hensive definition which can be given, I pro- 
ceed to point out some of the practical bear- 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 141 

ings of the command thus understood. I re- 
mark : 

I. It condemns all duelling, in every form 
and under all circumstances. Duelling is a 
voluntary combat with deadly weapons between 
two persons. And in what light can it be view- 
ed, so as not to present the double and horrid 
features of intentional murder and constructive 
suicide ? Unless indeed, as is not uncommon 
among such " honorable men," some trick of 
ingenious cowardice is resorted to by one of 
the parties, to secure his own life ; in which 
case his deadly purpose, instead of being divided 
between suicide and murder, includes only the 
latter, in one of its most cruel and deliberate and 
treacherous forms. As to suicide, I do not 
ever say it is intended by the duellist, and yet 
his voluntary exposure of his own life is cer- 
tainly a sin against his own life. 

What else than all this is duelling ? What 
more need be said to prove it that, which I have 
asserted it to be ? 

Two men, without any offence in either 
which the laws forbid, or, if there be such of- 
fence, under a government which is ready to 
punish it, agree to take the law into their own 
hands. They consent to put each his life into 



142 



SERMON VI. 



the scale of skill and of chance, and try which 
way it will turn. To this end they make the 
most secret and deliberate and deadly prepara- 
tions ; and when the time has come, they go 
forth with a few companions, accomplices in 
the crime, aiders and abettors of murder, and 
make a careful, and perhaps a repeated attempt 
to destroy each others lives. 

No matter what is the result ; no matter 
what the provocation. They stand both convict- 
ed before God, as murderers. And that King 
proceeded upon ground no less in accordance 
with sound morality than with good policy, 
who erected a gallows, and then gave permis- 
sion to two of his officers to fight, with the un- 
derstanding that the survivor should be led to 
instant execution. 

And yet all this is seen and tolerated in 
Christian nations ; and it awakens alarms, and 
calls forth a general burst of indignation, only 
when some political question becomes con- 
nected with it, or when some distinguished 
man falls from a " high estate, weltering in his 
blood," into the grave of the duellist. Yet 
common assassins are abhorred, and their names 
" cast out as evil." Verily, the sixth command- 
ment was no needless statute. 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 143 

II. It forbids suicide. Whether self-de- 
struction is ever perpetrated in a state of mind 
which may be called sound and accountable, I 
shall not now stop to inquire. For a sin, even that 
sin, committed in any other state of mind, no 
account will be required. It is in fact no sin. 
Still we should all remember that insanity, and 
its consequences, do in no measure affect our 
past transgressions ; and that our probation 
may be terminated, by a loss of intellect, years 
before death, as well as by death itself. 

But we are not only to abstain from the sud- 
den and violent destruction of our lives, how- 
ever irksome they may have become to us, but 
from " whatsoever tendeth thereunto." All 
reckless negligence, all needless exposure, all 
indulgence of appetite, endangering the health, 
is a sin against our own life. See the com- 
mencing inebriate. He shows marks of disease. 
An unnatural paleness, or undue color — perhaps 
both by turns, — appear upon his countenance. 
Languor succeeds to strength. Frequent slight 
indisposition leaves his friends in no doubt of 
the cause, which indeed he himself half begins 
to suspect. He is bartering, not only respec- 
tability, but health and life, for the gratification 
of his appetite. He is breaking the sixth com- 



144 



SERMON VI. 



mandment. He will die, unless he reforms, in 
the sight of Heaven a suicide. O, I would kindly 
but earnestly expostulate with him. I would say 
nothing concerning property, or respectability, or 
friends whose hearts are aching for him ; nothing, 
now, of the soul which he is putting in jeopardy 
of such a fearful doom ; but I would speak to 
him of his life, which by a gradual but sure 
process, he is undermining ; a life whose spark 
was enkindled by God, and which he has no 
more right to throw away by the bowl, than by 
the dagger or the pistol. I would beg him to 
stop, lest he should by and by fill not only a 
drunkard's, but a suicide's grave ; a suicide too, 
without the blessed apology of insanity. 

III. The sixth commandment also forbids 
offensive war. I use this phrase in no technical 
sense. In the affairs of nations, a war may be 
essentially defensive, on the part of a govern- 
ment which does in fact commence hostilities. 
But I speak according to the common sense of 
mankind ; and say, that for a nation, for other 
cause than peril of life and liberty to its inhab- 
itants, to commence a process by which thou- 
sands of innocent men shall be hurried violently 
into eternity, is but breaking the sixth com- 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



145 



mandment on a large scale ; a scale which, 
though it may be to men overwhelming and be- 
wildering, is perfectly understood and accurate- 
ly measured by God. Will no one be called to 
account for the hundreds of millions, w hom war 
has either directly or indirectly slaughtered, 
since the world began ? Truly, the Lord will 
not hold man guiltless in this matter. 

As I have spoken plainly concerning extreme 
views on the subject of peace, I shall be equally 
explicit as to the bearing of the sixth command- 
ment on all offensive and needless wars. Let 
us look at some of their results. 

One is, the undervaluing of human life. 
What cause is there, in all the course of earthly 
events, like war, to beget that indifference to 
the life of man, which will conceal the value of 
the soul of man, and cause it to seem a light 
thing to die and go to judgment ? I need not 
sav, that one universal hindrance to human sal- 
vation is a forgetfulness of immortality. How- 
ever common and fatal the error of forgetting 
that w T e must die, — to forget that we shall 
never die, is more common and more ruinous. 
The falsehood, " Thou shalt not surely die, 3 ' 
was the device of Satairs sophistry to ruin 
13 



146 SERMON VI. 

Adam. But how many thousands of Adam's 
children have been ruined by the greater false- 
hood, " Thou shall not surely live again.' 5 

"When a man has forgotten or disbelieves that 
he must live forever, his heart is dead and his 
soul is lost. If he is to die like a brute, why 
should he not live like a brute ? How many, 
because they doubt or forget that " The spirit 
of a man goeth upward," live, as to all spiritual 
things, like the beasts whose " spirit goeth 
downward to the earth." To such unbelief, 
God has opposed barriers ; to counteract such 
forgetfulness, He has furnished remembrancers ; 
and all that tends to throw down the one, and 
mutilate or destroy the other, is injurious to 
man, and the object of God's abhorrence. 

One of these barriers against the flood-tide of 
unbelief, — these hints to prevent oblivion of 
immortality, — is that natural reverence for hu- 
man life, and that dread of human death, 
which has been already mentioned. This rev- 
erence for the life of man, is, I am aware, the 
offspring in part of the very sentiment whose 
safeguard I have described it to be. And yet, 
like an affectionate child, who in his manhood 
protects the parent that nourished him in infan- 
cy, this feeling protects the other ; and in pro- 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 



147 



portion as a man learns to despise life, in that 
degree he learns to overlook the future duration 
of life, and to forget all that is consequent upon 
dying. The moment you tear down that par- 
tition, which, in the view of an unperverted 
mind separates human life from all other life, — 
the moment you come to feel that " he who 
slays a man is as if he cut off a dog's neck," 
that moment the delicate, and in the depraved 
and sensualized heart, almost exotic, plant, — 
the consciousness of an immortal and accounta- 
ble nature, — is chilled and withered. 

And has not war such a tendency ? What 
effect has it upon those who make war, and who 
plan campaigns and battles? "What is their 
object? Of course, to gain the greatest possi- 
ble advantage over the enemv. And if, be- 
tween two possible degrees of advantage, there 
should be a probable difference of five or ten 
thousand of the lives of the enemy, would that 
turn the scale, and induce the commander-in- 
chief to decide on the less advantage, because 
the blood shed w 7 as to be less ? So far from 
it, that you have already perceived the failure 
of my illustration, arising from the fact, that 
almost necessarily, the more loss of life on 
one side, the more advantage to the other. 



148 



SERMON VI. 



In one of the volumes of the writings of 
Washington, we find a direction of that great 
and good man to a subordinate officer, to be 
sure, in executing a certain movement, to an- 
noy the left wing of the enemy as much as possi- 
ble. And what did he mean by 46 annoying the 
left wing ? " What, in the name of humanity, 
but to kill the left wing, as many of them as 
possible, and if all, so much the better ! Has 
all this no tendency to lower a man's — even such 
a man's — estimate of the value of human life ? 

And what is the effect of war upon the ac- 
tual combatants ? Did you ever hear an old sol- 
dier describe his sensations when on the battle 
field ? The first feeling, he tells you, was one 
of anxiety. He trembled. He wished himself 
in a place of safety, — not, it would seem, an 
unreasonable wish, at least for a man who is 
aware that his soul is unprepared for judgment. 
But after the work of death has commenced, 
how changed the whole current of his feel- 
ings ! All fear is now gone ; death has no ter- 
rors ; the dying are trampled on with indiffer- 
ence ; the flying balls are heard with as little 
apprehension as the buzzing of insects; and 
his only thought is, how he may kill the great- 
est possible number of those fellow men near 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 149 



him who wear a different colored coat, or use 
a different weapon from his own, or have a dif- 
ferently painted or embroidered banner, wav- 
ing over their heads. 

It is true, the feeling in this man, of indiffer- 
ence to life, both his own life and that of others, 
will in a measure pass away as the excitement 
of the battle subsides. And yet who will say 
that the sense of reverence for the human spirit 
has not suffered from the shock ? No, my hear- 
ers, you cannot replace that dislocated joint in 
his mental frame ; you cannot tune again that 
jarring chord ; the fair harmony of the Creator's 
works is broken. One battle has made life 
less precious to that man, and the soul less a 
reality in his view ; place him in two, or in ten 
battles, and you have the hardened man of blood, 
who thinks as little of his life as of his soul, and 
as little of either, as of the life of his horse or 
his dog. 

And what is the effect of war upon the pub- 
lic mind in this respect ? The people pray for 
victory ; they hope for victory ; they give 
thanks for victory. Thus it becomes in their 
view a sort of duty to pray to the God of Heaven 
to send some ten or twenty thousand unpre- 
pared souls, more or less, into a wretched eter- 
13* 



150 



SERMON VI. 



nity. And when their prayer is answered, 
then follow rejoicings, and illuminations, and 
thanksgivings, that it has pleased God to allow 
them to kill so many of their fellow-men ; and 
the more deaths, the more rejoicing ; the more 
perdition, the more gratitude. 

Whether, therefore, we look at the direct or 
indirect results of war, we shall find it equally 
opposed to the spirit of the Gospel and to the 
requisitions of this part of the Law. 

IV. The spirit of the sixth commandment 
as explained by Christ and the apostles, forbids 
all anger and hatred, and interdicts all those 
habits and occupations which tend to shorten 
our own lives and those of others. By the 
common law of England, a man is considered 
a murderer, who in a populous town, without 
warning given, lets fall a stone or a timber upon 
the travelled path, " for then," say the com- 
mentators, " it is malice against all mankind." 
I would that I might have opportunity earnestly 
and kindly to request all those who have any 
thing to do with the manufacture, or importa- 
tion, or sale, of that which may be and is 
abused, to the hurt and death of men's bodies, 
not to say their souls, to reflect upon it, and 
ask themselves if they are doing every thing 



THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT. 151 



they can, " tending unto the preservation of 
their own lives and the lives of others." 

Let me also recommend every possible act 
of humanity; all needful care for the poor; 
the encouragement of every invention for sav- 
ing life ; and the fostering of the medical and 
surgical professions, both by providing facilities 
for the study of anatomy and in other ways, as 
having a direct bearing upon this subject. 

There are various forms of reckless as well 
as of malicious homicide, such as ignorant and 
conceited quackery on the part of those who 
attempt to repair the human frame, without 
knowing the simplest principles of its construc- 
tion ; trials of speed in steamboats, where a 
number of human lives are little thought of in 
comparison with five minutes of time gained on 
a rival conveyance ; and many other neglects of 
this command, on which it is the duty both of 
individuals and governments indignantly to 
frown. 

But I pursue the subject into detail no far- 
ther. If the value of human life and the duty of 
preserving it, has been in even the slightest ad- 
ditional degree impressed upon your minds my 
object will be attained. 



152 



SERMON VI. 



Let us in spirit as well as in the letter, be 
diligent promoters of the observance of the 
sixth commandment ; cultivating those generous 
affections which the Bible approves, and avoid- 
ing all that bitterness and hatred, which it so 
unequivocally condemns as involving the es- 
sence of the crime of murder. Let us remem- 
ber, too, that He who has said, " Thou shalt 
not kill," has also declared that he " is able to 
destroy both soul and body in hell." This is the 
second death ; everlasting destruction. If the 
death of the body is frightful, what shall we 
say of the death of the soul ? God grant us 
all, eternal life in His Son. Amen. 



SERMON VII. 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT, 

EXODUS 20 : 14. 
THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY. 

God is a Spirit. So is man. God is an In- 
finite Spirit; man, a finite one. God is only 
a Spirit ; man is something else beside. Yet 
both are Spirits. 

Of man's Spirit, God is the Father ; while 
of his body, He only styles himself the Framer. 
Important distinction ! The hand of the Deity 
made the human frame ; the inbreathing of the 
Deity made the human soul. That divine in- 
spiration, that spiritual paternity, what an hon- 
orable origin did it give to man's nobler nature. 



154 



SERMON VII. 



though for a time associated with, and confined 
within, and assimilated to, the tabernacle of an 
animal existence. 

Well has it been said that to such an impris- 
oned spirit, death is not so much a death, as a 
resurrection. Yes ! in this sepulchre the spirit 
is entombed ; and yet because it is a whited 
sepulchre, and fair to look upon, it is idolized, 
and honored, and regarded as the spirit's home 
and dwelling-place. Nay, the spirit itself is 
often overlooked, or regarded merely as the 
high priest, and not the Divinity, of this sepul- 
chral temple, this monumental abbey. 

It is the great glory of the Christian religion, 
that it restores this broken and distorted image 
of man, as viewed by man himself, to its true 
proportions and relations. It reveals to him his 
own rational and immortal self, as the nobler, 
the only truly noble, part ; while it presents his 
animal nature, not indeed to be despised, since 
it was curiously and wonderfully made by a 
h ind which never errs, and provided with facul- 
ties and appelites fitted to its highest good, and 
the highest good, too, of its immortal tenant, 
and yet to be ranked far below that immortal 
part, and to be held in strict subjection to its 
imperative claims, and its highest welfare. 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 155 



The whole genius of Christianity, as to the 
comparison between the animal and the spirit- 
ual man, and its influence on their mutual rela- 
tions, is developed in those striking words of 
St. Paul: "But / keep under my body, and 
bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, 
when I have preached to others, I myself should 
be a castaway." 

Noble lesson ! which neither heathen phi- 
losophy, nor heathen religion ever taught. The 
latter has often placed both its hopes and its 
ceremonies, in the grossest animalism ; while 
the former has either sanctioned the most un- 
limited indulgence of appetite, or by an un- 
natural prohibition, has but increased the evil 
it sought to remedy, enchaining and des- 
troying the body it undertook to keep in sub- 
jection, or else adding hypocrisy to excess. 

It is only Christianity, w 7 hich by teaching us 
to use the world without abusing it, has shown 
the mind how to use the body as a servant, 
without crushing it on the one hand, or being 
overcome by it on the other. It might be easy 
to apply this statement to the various principles 
of our animal nature ; and to show that godli- 
ness is profitable unto all things, having promise 



156 



SERMON VII. 



of the life that now is, as well as of that which 
is to come. 

But I proceed to remark specifically ; that the 
Christian religion has taken care for man's spir- 
itual and temporal welfare, in one important re- 
spect, by the simple and single ordinance of 
marriage. And it is to the universal, the hon- 
orable, and the unperverted use, of this institu- 
tion, that the seventh commandment and all the 
scripture hints and teachings on this subject, 
have reference. It is a highly important and 
solemn subject, affording no room for trifling, 
when properly discussed, except to persons of 
weak minds and bad hearts. God who created 
us with certain impulses and passions, and who 
will call us to account for their abuse and per- 
version, knows it to be a solemn subject, and if 
mirthfulness shall exist in minds or be shown 
on the countenances of any present, God sees 
and man may know, that their views and feel- 
ings are neither just to the subject, nor honora- 
ble to themselves. We should rather resemble 
children or fools, than wise persons, if we could 
not look at a great fact in our nature, our histo- 
ry, our relations to God, and the bearings of life 
upon our eternal destiny, with sobriety, and a 
candid willingness to be instructed* 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 157 



I submit the following statement, as compre- 
hending my own view of the scripture doctrine, 
and of facts, on this subject. 

That our Creator, having seen fit in creating 
and perpetuating mankind, to follow the analogy 
of the w 7 hole animate creation, has also seen fit 
by an ordinance of single, separate, and faithful 
matrimony, to provide for the peace, purity and 
welfare of society ; — that many of His severest 
threatenings are recorded against all that is 
contrary to that institution, either in thought, 
word, or deed ; and that sins against the spirit 
of the seventh commandment have actually been 
the cause of more individual misery, and pub- 
lic debasement and ruin, than any other class 
of sins, as appears both from sacred and com- 
mon history. 

As to the divine authority of the marriage 
institution, nothing can possibly be plainer. As 
might have been expected concerning so essen- 
tial an element in the structure of human soci- 
ety, God has not left it without abundant wit- 
ness. The whole scripture account of the cre- 
ation of Adam and Eve leaves the doctrine of 
single, permanent, marriage, — that is Christian 
marriage, as opposed both to polygamy and to 
change, — hardly less distinct than it is left by 
14 



158 



SERMON VII. 



the more minute instructions of the New Tes- 
tament. As to the existence of polygamy among 
the Jewish patriarchs, which has been supposed 
by some to sanction the practice, and to show 
that the original form of the institution of mar- 
riage, as confined to Adam and Eve, was changed 
by the will of the Creator, I shall give you only 
the conclusion to which a full consideration of 
the subject would lead us. This I shall do in 
the words of another. When we reflect,' 5 
he says, c< that the primitive institution of mar- 
riage limited it to one man and one woman : 
that this institution was adhered to by Noah 
and his sons, amidst the degeneracy of the age 
in which they lived, and in spite of the exam- 
ples of polygamy which the accursed race of 
Cain had introduced ; when we consider how 
very few, comparatively speaking, the exam- 
ples of this practice were among the faithful, 
how much it brought its own punishment with 
it, and how dubious and equivocal those passa- 
ges are, in which it appears to have the sanc- 
tion of the divine approbation ; when to these re- 
flections we add another, respecting the limited 
views and temporary nature of the more ancient 
dispensations and institutions of religion, how 
often the imperfections of the patriarchs and 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 



159 



people of God in old times are recorded, with- 
out any express notification of their criminality, 
how much is said to be commanded, which our 
reverence for the holiness of God and His law 
will only suffer us to suppose were for wise 
ends permitted, how frequently the messen- 
gers of God adapted themselves to the genius 
of the people to whom they were sent, and the 
circumstances of the times in which they lived ; 
above all, when we consider the purity, equity, 
and benevolence of the Christian law, the ex- 
plicit declaration of our Lord and His Apostle 
Paul, respecting the institution of marriage, its 
design and limitation ; — -when we reflect, too, 
on the testimony of the most ancient fathers, 
who could not possibly be ignorant of the gen- 
eral practice of the apostolic church ; and finally, 
when to these considerations we add those 
which are founded on justice to the female sex, 
and all the regulations of domestic economy and 
national policy, we must wholly condemn the 
practice of polygamy.' 5 

1 will revert only to one point alluded to in 
this extract ; I mean the equality or near ap- 
proach to equality in the number of the sexes. 
The male children born into the world are to 
the female nearly as nineteen to eighteen ; — a 



160 



SERMON VII. 



disproportion providing for the greater exposure 
of men to violent death by war, shipwreck, and 
other causes, — and showing, as it seems to me. 
very conclusively, the design of the Creator as 
to this matter. 

Without dwelling upon any farther proof of 
the divine institution of marriage, such as our 
Saviour's presence and miraculous act at the cer- 
emony, as performed in Cana of Galilee, — the 
frequent comparisons of the relation between 
Christ and His church, with that between 
the parties in such a union, and the like,— I 
would now call your attention for a moment, to 
the next remark in my above general statement, 
viz : that this institution was designed, and so 
far as it has been strictly and properly observed, 
has had the effect, to promote the peace, purity 
and welfare of society. 

Its history is the internal evidence of its di- 
vine origin. For where has either of the three 
blessings just named been found, except under 
the shadow of this sacred tree ? From the po- 
lygamy of Asia,— the strictest and least abused 
form of licentiousness, — down through all the 
gradations of disobedience to God's law of mar- 
riage, — even to the gross animalism of the sav- 
age, or the more guilty levities of some polished 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 161 



and well instructed communities in Christen- 
dom, — nothing has come from this form of dis- 
obedience to God's law, but misery, and strife, 
and degradation. On the contrary, we cannot 
find a community where this institution has 
been known, and respected, and observed in the 
strictness and purity of its original design, which 
is not peaceful, moral, and happy. In the train 
of this virtue all others seem naturally " in beau- 
teous order " to arrange themselves ; and as we 
look abroad upon the face of society both an- 
cient and modern, we cease to wonder that the 
Bible contains so many threatenings against this 
sin, and seems almost to regard it as the very 
personification of all vice. 

This is another point included in my general 
statement. You need onlv to glance at the 
pages of the holy scriptures in order to perceive, 
that sins against the divine institution of mar- 
riage, — for so I regard all transgressions of the 
seventh commandment, — are not only more 
frequently forbidden, and made the subject of 
more dreadful threatenings, but oftener used for 
the illustration of sins against God, and as per- 
sonifications of sin in general, than any other 
class of transgressions. 

If the people of Israel wandered from God, 
14* 



162 



SERMON VII. 



and worshipped idols, they were spoken of as 
an unfaithful spouse to their "Maker their hus- 
band," — as He styles Himself, in at least one 
passage. If a nation is to be described as wick- 
ed in the extreme, " an adulterous people " is 
the phrase employed. One heresy of a fore- 
seen corrupted form of Christianity is spoken of 
under the head of " forbidding to marry ; " — 
while the church of anti-Christ is styled u the 
great harlot," the mother of abominations, drunk 
with the blood of the saints. 

See too, the frequent cautions of the apostles 
to the Christian churches on this subject, cau- 
tions severe and plain, almost too plain for mod- 
ern ears, — showing that the sacred writers 
thought it a dangerous point, which ought to be 
well guarded, and also giving us a glimpse of 
the state of that heathen society by which their 
converts were surrounded, and from which many 
of them had been taken. In that fearful pas- 
sage too, in the sixth chapter of the first of Cor- 
rinthians, where so many damning sins are enu- 
merated, which those who commit " shall not 
inherit the kingdom of God," sins of this class 
are included under two or three distinct specifi- 
cations. 

Nor has the providence of God, failed to 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 163 



confirm His word. Shame and misery, disease 
and death, have all followed in the ghastly train 
of this giant sin. Jealousy, and hatred, and war, 
beside a thousand other nameless and deplorable 
consequences, have set the seal of God's repro- 
bation upon the unrestrained indulgence of hu- 
man passions. Over many of the results of this 
sin, a veil must be thrown. But let the young 
remember that horrors untold await the trans- 
gressor ; and that the fair bowers of indulgence 
but cover the gateway to despair and misery. 
It is indeed true as the wise man has said, of 
those who tempt, or are tempted, to disobey the 
holy restrictions of God on this subject, that 
" their feet go down to death, their steps take 
hold on hell." 

But there are a few of the social and moral 
bearings of the subject which admit and de- 
mand a more particular notice. 

The first is, the influence of the marriage in- 
stitution, when observed in its simplicity and 
purity, upon the character and standing in soci- 
ety of the female sex. It is well that woman 
should love the Christian religion ; since from 
that alone has sprung Christian marriage, to 
which she owes the proud and noble, yet modest 
and gentle, place she occupies, at the head of 



164 



SERMON VII. 



society. The licentiousness of barbarous na- 
tions, and the polygamy of the semi-barbarous, — 
what have they ever done for the fairest portion 
of creation, but to render it the most degraded 
and despised ? 

Where but in such countries, would the doc- 
trine have obtained currency, that " women 
have no souls ? " Where else have they, where 
else could they, have been treated as man's 
property, — as his slaves, the objects by turns of 
his angry and his sordid passions, w T hen the 
Creator so kindly and so wisely adapted them 
to his respectful and endeared and sacred com- 
panionship ? 

The very differences of physical and mental 
structure, which seem to assign to woman a 
quiet place in the scenes of human life, shel- 
tered from its noisiest bustle, and its weightiest 
cares, have also prepared the way for that con- 
siderate and protective feeling towards her, 
w 7 hich is fitted alike to secure her dignity and 
her happiness. But all this is attained only in 
those states of society in which the divine law 
of marriage is recognized and obeyed. 

Nor is the licentiousness of paganism, or the 
polygamy of mohammedism, necessary to the 
impairing of her dignity and her degradation 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 165 



in the scale of society. No, it is well she 
should understand, it is well her true admirers, — 
and such are all " honorable men," and no 
others, — should understand, that every offence, 
in thought, word, or deed, against the strictest 
purity, — whether committed by man or wo- 
man, — is an insult to the dignity of the w T hole 
female sex, an inroad, slight perhaps, but real, 
upon those beautiful and holy barriers, which 
in Christian society so defend and guard the 
delicacy and the happiness of those, who have 
neither strength nor courage to defend them- 
selves by arms or by eloquence. 

It is no wonder that woman should so terri- 
bly visit with her withering indignation, — her 
relentless scorn, — the frailties of her own sex. 
When the sins of the other, generally more in- 
excusable, shall be viewed with equal detesta- 
tion, and resented with the same severity, she 
will have done something more w r orthy of her- 
self for the dignity of her sex. 

I have spoken of indignation and severity. I 
fully agree with many modern writers that these 
silent but withering rebukes are unequally ad- 
ministered, when but one sex is made to bear 
them, and the other excused, or even viewed 
with a kind of shuddering admonition. But I 



166 



SERMON Vil. 



would also say, that neither upon one sex or 
the other, should the door of hope be forever 
closed. Evidence of reformation, — though al- 
ways liable to more suspicion than in most 
other cases, — -yet due and proper evidence of 
reformation should be the ground of a slow but 
encouraging confidence. We forget our own 
unworthiness, — we overlook the example of 
our Father in Heaven, if we forgive not the 
penitent. And while, when I consider as I 
have said above, that this class of offences is 
against the dignity and the rights of the whole 
female sex, I could almost excuse the virtuous 
among them for cherishing an unforgiving and 
an exterminating hatred, against all, even the 
slightest transgression, of either sex — (I say, 
exterminating, for who could live under the 
concentrated frown of woman in her matronly 
or maidenly dignity ?) Still, I would earnestly 
desire that a way of return might be kept open 
for all, who have not proved themselves utterly 
and hopelessly unworthy of those encouraging 
smiles, with which we should always welcome 
the wandering of the human race back to the 
paths of rectitude. Else, how can we say 
" Forgive us our trespasses as w 7 e forgive those 
who trespass against us?" 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 



167 



My next remark upon the social bearings of 
this subject, has reference to one of the most 
pure, exalted, and beneficent feelings, of which 
human nature is capable. I mean true and 
honorable love ; resembling, while it differs 
from, the friendships which sometimes ex- 
ist between persons of the same sex, and 
founded not less upon original differences in 
the mental and social qualities, than upon 
other distinctions. When God said it was not 
good for man to be alone, He had a deep spiritual 
meaning. And of all the marks of design in 
creation, which prove the existence of an intelli- 
gent and benevolent Creator, I know of none 
more striking, than that adaptation In the men- 
tal sensibilities and emotions of the two sexes, 
which makes their presence agreeable to each 
other, and w r hich, under favorable circumstan- 
ces, produces a permanent and ever increasing 
preference for the society of an individual. 

This I call love ; " The only bliss of Paradise 
that has survived the Fall ; " one of the most gen- 
erous, exalted principles of our nature, though 
degraded by many unworthy associations, and 
so treated by many modern writers, both in po- 
etry and prose, that the word is often all we 
find to remind us of what it might and ought 



168 



SERMON VII. 



to signify. This lives, only in those countries 
and in those communities where God's laws are 
observed. Elsewhere it degenerates in a man- 
ner and measure which we will not attempt to 
describe. Admired, sought after, is woman, 
every where ; she is loved, only where she is 
respected ; and she is respected only by the 
virtuous. 

But this evil has a weighty bearing upon pri- 
vate happiness. Individuals may know, — they 
ought to know, that all unworthy feelings 
tend not only to prevent for the time, but for- 
ever to preclude, those which are worthy and 
right. The noblest earthly susceptibilities of 
the soul, those which God has used as illustra- 
tions of the deep and holy love of saints and 
angels to each other and to Himself, may be 
wholly and forever repressed, and as it w r ere, 
overgrown, by other and unhallowed senti- 
ments. The heart may be so perverted by 
false associations, that it is no longer capable 
of loving, or worthy to beloved, as God de- 
signed it should be. How much do they lose, 
in this as in every thing else, who underrate or 
overlook their spiritual nature, and treat them- 
selves as possessing a mere animal existence ! 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 



169 



I cannot do justice to this subject, without 
reminding you of the spiritual and comprehen- 
sive import of this commandment, as laid down 
by the Saviour in the loth chapter of Matthew, 
The passage is familiar to you all. It applies 
to all, of either sex. And it shows most con- 
clusively that the seventh commandment is 
often transgressed by those, whose reputation 
is never in the slightest degree impaired. 

Let me also remind you of one clause of the 
Lord's prayer in its application to this subject. 
You have already understood me to refer to the 
petition, — " Lead us not into temptation," — a 
prayer which can never be properly or consistent- 
ly offered by those do not so far as practicable-, 
avoid temptation. I would not recommend 
that affected, overscrupulous manner which 
rather betokens a wrong heart than the purity 
of a right one. But I would advise and earn- 
estly entreat all my hearers, especially the 
young, daily to offer that prayer and to act con- 
sistently with its spirit in this as well as in 
other matters. 

Nor is it an easy thing even in a community 
like that of New-England, to avoid temptation 
and to preserve strict purity of thought. So 
much of our popular literature is disgraced by 
15 



170 



SERMON VII. 



allusions of an improper kind ; so many of our 
periodical prints contain articles which no re- 
spectable person ought to read to one of another 
sex, or even of his own, without a blush ; and 
so loose are the notions of many who ought to 
set the highest example on this as well as other 
subjects, that the common rule of silence seems 
to need an occasional exception, and it becomes 
the pulpit and the press in a discreet and wise 
manner to lift up the warning voice. Happy 
would it be for any community, to be so free 
from temptations and transgressions against 
both the letter and the spirit of this command- 
ment, that it might be passed by, even in such 
a series of discourses as the present. There is 
a natural delicacy in the human mind which 
shrinks from such discussions ; and while all 
scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is 
profitable, it might not follow that every pas- 
sage should in turn be taken as a theme of public 
discourse. In such a community it would be 
enough that God's commands and warnings 
stand upon the sacred page, and the sensitive 
feelings of no heart need be jarred by allusions 
which it is creditable rather than otherwise, to 
an individual to hear with pain. 

But such a community is not to be found; and 



THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT. 171 



while I- have never seen the propriety of some 
details of statements and expostulation, which 
many good men and women have judged it 
their duty to spread before the public,- — yet the 
Christian and the philanthropist ought to let 
their influence be felt, and on proper occasions 
their voices should be heard, against this great, 
ruinous, and in one form or another, I fear, in- 
creasing evil. 

Most of the plays, the novels, the poetry, 
and many of the newspapers of the day, are 
filled with allusions, to say nothing more, which 
tend to undermine in the heart of the young 
reader the precious foundations which the 
Fall seems to have left partly undisturbed, 
and on which as retained and consolidated, 
must be built all that is morally fair and useful. 
Sweep these away, and what have you left? 
What are honesty, and truth, and kindness, 
without delicacy of thought, purity of feeling, 
and modesty of deportment ? 

But let us not lose ourselves in a crowd, 
nor forget that this commandment, like all the 
rest, is addressed in the singular number to 
each person to whom a copy of the Bible has 
been sent : " Thou shalt not commit adultery." 
Now I have only to request each of my 



172 



SERMON VII. 



hearers to remember this : to remember also 
what Christ says in the loth chapter of Mat- 
thew, at the 27th and 28th verses, and to reflect 
on what those verses imply beyond their literal 
meaning ; to bear in mind also that we pray 
or ought to pray, every day, " Lead us not 
into temptation,** and to think what duties of 
caution that prayer implies; and finally, to re- 
member every where and at all times, the 
solemn words of scripture, " Thou God seest 
me," — implying too, Thou, God, hearest my 
words, Thou, God, knowest my thoughts. If 
all my hearers, from the oldest to the youngest, 
would give heed to these exhortations, I might 
hope that in this respect at least, they would 
come under that benediction of Christ, " Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. n 



SERMON VIII. 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 

EXODUS 20 : 15. 
THOU SHALT NOT STEAL. 

" An exceedingly appropriate text for a peni- 
tentiary sermon," I hear some one exclaim. 
But my hearers, I should not waste my time or 
yours, by preaching from any text, though it 
were in the Bible, which was appropriate only 
to thieves and pickpockets. 

Honesty, both as a matter of policy and 
duty, is, of all the virtues, most universally ad- 
mitted and admired ; but there is hardly one 
of the whole catalogue, which men are oftener 
and more plausibly tempted to transgress. 
15* 



174 



SERMON VIII. 



You all remember Christ's abstract of the 
moral law. His second division is, " Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." There is one 
more indirect commentary from the same di- 
vine source. It is this: 66 All things whatsoever 
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye 
even so to them ; for this is the law and the 
Prophets." These two passages have a direct 
and very intelligible bearing upon this com- 
mandment. It clearly falls within the second 
table of the moral law. Consequently, this ab- 
stract of, and commentary on, that table, are to 
be applied to it, and will help us to under- 
stand it. 

The subject of property is one of great ex- 
tent ; and not easily, in all its branches, under- 
stood and explained. The Great Proprietor is 
God. By virtue of Creation, all things are 
His ; for without Him was not any thing 
made that was made. Of the animate and the 
inanimate creation ; of suns and planets, of 
comets and of worlds; of men and of angels; 
of bodies and of spirits ; of time and of eter- 
nity ; He is the maker and the owner. He 
possesses, both of right and in fact, — a su- 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 



175 



premacy of control, which in the hands of a be- 
ing of less wisdom, or less benevolence, or less 
justice, would be the most tremendous and the 
most dangerous autocracy that the human mind 
can imagine. The tyranny, and the slavery, 
and the oppression, which exist among men, 
would be nothing, — absolutely nothing, — in 
comparison. 

As it is, all is right and safe. The righte- 
ousness of God affords a pledge of justice 
and of safety to the universe, which no con- 
stitution, no balance of power could even 
most remotely approach, much less equal. And 
some of these various possessions, held both in 
right and in fact, by the almighty Proprietor, 
He has been pleased to commit to man, His 
only rational creature on earth. 

Nor ought this origin of all human prop- 
erty to be lost sight of. It often is ; and 
though we are but tenants, and in one sense, 
" tenants at will," of all that we hold, we im- 
agine ourselves independent owners thereof, 
and in consequence neglect the returns which 
God expects, and quite overlook the responsi- 
bility, which under God's government, as 
well as man's, attaches to tenants and stew- 



SERMON VIII. 



ards. " Will a man rob God ? yet ye have 
robbed me," said Jehovah by his prophet. 

I have said we hold every thing at the will 
of God. because the time of our possession 
is fixed by God himself : we are only ten- 
ants at will, because we know not what 
a day may bring forth. Let us. then, my 
hearers, remember that our first duty, not of 
gratitude merely, but of honesty, we owe to 
God, who has given, or rather lent to us, both 
our bodies, our lives, and all our possessions, 
and who expects from us such a use of these 
things as He has prescribed. From this source 
originate the first and most important rights of 
property a man can have, — property in him- 
self, — personal property in the strictest, and 
original sense of that phrase. Of these rights 
he can never be justly deprived, except as a 
punishment for transgressing certain laws under 
which he is placed. " Life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness/'' are truly styled 6i certain 
inalienable rights.'' They are a part of the 
property entrusted by the Great Proprietor 
to man, — not in any associated possession, — 
but individually, singly. My person is my 
own : my life is my owd ; my liberty is my 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 177 



own. He who takes them away against my 
consent, steals them. When I say against my 
consent, I refer to that implied consent which 
by living in society when I might live in soli- 
tude, I give, to the needful regulations of so- 
ciety. Though I am far from adopting the 
doctrine that government has no foundation but 
the express individual assent of the governed, 
yet I hold that any man who voluntarily re- 
mains in any community, does for the time be- 
ing, assent to its laws, and that if in conse- 
quence of breaking those laws, he loses liberty^ 
or even life, he has only himself to blame. 

This applies neither to national oppression 
without justice, nor to involuntary servitude 
without crime. In these cases there is a breach 
of the eighth commandment, as well as some- 
times of many others. Stealing men is no less 
a crime surely than stealing money. Depriving 
a man of his liberty, as does a kidnapper or a 
despot, is at least as great a sin against God's 
rules of property, as depriving him of his house 
or his land* 

The eighth commandment does then forbid y 
primarily and peremptorily, all tyrannizing over> 
and all enslaving, of our fellow men, of what- 
ever condition or color ; because those acts, 



178 



SERMON VIII. 



deprive human beings of the property which the 
Great Proprietor of all gave to them and not to 
us. No deed of inheritance or conveyance can 
sustain a despot's throne. No title can make 
good my claim to another's person. There 
is but one Being competent to make the 
conveyance, and He has never done it. Every 
man under God, owns himself. He has a right 
to himself. No other man can own him. I may 
lawfully be restrained, punished, and even ex- 
ecuted, by just laws, — but I can never be 
owned. I can never be in the sight of Heaven, 
either serf or slave. I cannot sell myself; no 
other can sell me. The right to myself is no 
more alienable by myself than by another. 
God gave me myself to keep. So much for 
what I call, strictly, personal property. 

And now we come to other objects ; objects 
out of man's own self; objects either in them- 
selves useful, — as the fruits of the earth ; or 
indirectly useful, — as the materials for clothing, 
dwellings, and the like, and the fields and for- 
ests which produce them ; or intrinsically 
worthless or nearly so, — as gold and silver and 
precious stones, but which have become con- 
ventionally the medium of trade and the repre- 
sentatives of all descriptions of property. All 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 179 



these things compose wealth. They are what 
is commonly called property. And it is to the 
just and equitable use of this, that this com- 
mandment has its most obvious reference. 

And here I must observe, that one standard 
of honesty has before our day, and to some ex- 
tent in our day, been set up in the world, which 
neither the Bible in general, nor this part of it 
in particular, sanctions, and which most assured- 
ly the Providence of God has most unequivo- 
cally disowned ; — I mean the standard of equal- 
ity. It has been supposed by some, that all ac- 
cumulation of property on the part of individuals 
or bodies of men is sinful against God, and dis- 
honest towards the remainder of the human race, 
each of whom, it is contended, has an equal 
right to an equal share of the property which 
exists. The rich are regarded as the enemies 
of God and man, deserving to be despoiled of all 
that they possess beyond a fair average of the 
good things there are in the w T orld. Sometimes 
this principle has been acted out in violence and 
plunder 5 oftener it has operated silently, creat- 
ing envy,, jealousy, and hatred, between those 
different classes of society, the rich and the 
poor, from the very existence of which so many 



180 



SERMON VIII. 



of the virtues and kindnesses of social life have 
been seen to flow. 

Now as to all this, however beautiful the idea 
of a universal equality may be on paper, or in 
one's own private imaginings, nothing can be 
more unequivocally reprobated by the whole 
course of God's Providence. If each man born 
into the world, had assigned to him by the 
Supreme Proprietor of all things a certain por- 
tion of the land, and other property in the world, 
together with equal facilities of location and 
other advantages to retain his share, and an 
equal talent and disposition for business, then it 
might indeed be obvious and sufficient evidence 
against a man's honesty, that he had doubled 
his share at the expense of one or more of his 
neighbors. 

But when we consider that the foundation of 
these differences is laid by God himself, and 
that they depend upon a thousand circumstan- 
ces not at all under man's control, it is plain 
that there may be private honesty and public 
justice, without an absolute and universal equal- 
ity. Look at the differences in the place and 
condition of birth. One is born in a fertile 
country, where all the actual wants of man are 
supplied almost spontaneously ; another among 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 181 



barren hills, or on a rocky shore, where hunt- 
ing or fishing, or at best a toilsome and preca- 
rious agriculture, must be resorted to, not for 
wealth, but for subsistence. I will say nothing 
of property or poverty inherited, because it may 
be said that such different inheritances could 
not have been witnessed, if the distinctions al- 
leged to be unjust had not already been made 
in other ways. But I may refer to that differ- 
ence of talent and of temperament, which would 
most infallibly and necessarily destroy equality, 
in a single week, even if it were forcibly es- 
tablished. 

No ! my hearers. When Christ said, " The 
poor ye have always with you," He recognized 
not merely an occasional fact in the condition 
of that community, but a fixed and unchanging 
principle in the economy of all human society. 
When He cautioned the rich against their be- 
setting sins and dangers, — even going so far as 
to say it was easier for a camel to go through 
the eye of a needle, than for them to enter into 
the kingdom of heaven, — He evidently ex- 
pected and knew that as there always had been 
rich men, there always would be. That it was 
not the fact of their being rich, but the sins in- 
to which their wealth might lead them, which 
16 



182 



SERMON VIII. 



constituted the danger of their perdition, is 
made plain by the language of the apostle, 
I Timothy 6: 17 — 19: " Charge them that 
are rich in this world, that they be not high- 
minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the 
living God, who giveth us richly all things to 
enjoy ; that they do good, that they be rich 
in good works, ready to distribute, willing to 
communicate; laying up in store for themselves 
a good foundation against the time to come, 
that they may lay hold on eternal life. 5 ' 

We are now prepared to regard mankind, as 
entrusted by their Creator with various posses- 
sions, promotive of their convenience and hap- 
piness. Of these things, or of most of them, 
He has never chosen to make a common undi- 
vided stock for the joint use of man, so far as we 
can gather both from His word and His Provi- 
dence. One exception, and almost the only 
one, beside the air we breathe, is the ocean, 
which in all its parts, except a narrow bor- 
der of a few leagues around each country 
bounded by it, is the open highway of na- 
tions, the undivided property of man. As to 
the original acquisition, by individuals and by 
nations, of various portions of the earth's sur- 
face, that essential element and foundation of 
all wealth, I shall not be expected to attempt 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 



183 



a minute discussion. Practically, we may con- 
clude that possession is property, where no 
manifest injustice appears ; and even then, the 
remedy is with the laws,' where there are laws, — 
and they are every where 3 in some form or 
other. In any case, property however unjustly 
held by another, does not therefore belong to 
us, either in law or equity. And so our courts 
have justly decided that it is stealing, for indi- 
viduals to take stolen or smuggled goods from 
the place, where, however wrongfully, they 
were secreted by their dishonest possessors. 

The essence of dishonesty is ; the taking 
another's property without his voluntary and 
intelligent assent. I say, voluntary, because 
a man who is robbed, often gives what may be 
called an involuntary assent, by delivering his 
money to save his life. And I say, intelligent, — 
because an idiot, or a maniac, may give away 
property which it is dishonesty in another to 
receive. So any man may sometimes through 
misapprehension, give or sell what he did not 
intend to part with, or for a consideration which 
he never designed to accept. If I buy a bar- 
ren, rocky hill, which I know to contain a hid- 
den treasure, as for instance a gold mine, for a 
mere trifle, because of the owner's ignorance of 



184 



SERMON VIII. 



that which I know, I have no honest title to 
my purchase, because I have not the intelligent 
assent of the owner. 

Assuming, therefore, the definition of dis- 
honesty above given, to be correct, let us in- 
quire for some of the practical bearings of the 
eighth commandment, and endeavor to ascer- 
tain the strict and spiritual rule of scriptural. 
Christian, honesty. 

And here I cannot forbear to quote again 
from the language of those venerable fathers in 
the church, who have given us so full and in 
general so judicious a commentary upon Chris- 
tian doctrine in this as in other matters. They 
say in the larger Catechism: "The duties 
required in the eighth commandment are 
truth, faithfulness and justice, in contracts and 
commerce, between man and man ; rendering 
to every one his due ; restitution of goods un- 
lawfully detained from the right owners thereof; 
giving and lending freely, according to our abil- 
ities and the necessities of others ; moderation 
of our judgment, will, and affections, concern- 
ing worldly goods ; a provident care and study 
to get, keep, use, and dispose, those things 
which are necessary and convenient for the 
sustentation of our nature, and suitable to our 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 185 



condition ; a lawful calling, and diligence in it; 
frugality ; avoiding unnecessary law-suits and 
suretyship, or other like engagements ; and an 
endeavor by all just and lawful means, to pro- 
cure, preserve, and further, the wealth and out- 
ward estate of others as well as our own. 

The sins forbidden in the Eighth Command- 
ment are said to be, " beside the neglect of the 
duties required, theft, robbery, man-stealing, 
and receiving any thing that is stolen ; fraudu- 
lent dealing ; false weights and measures ; re- 
moving landmarks ; injustice and unfaithfulness 
in contracts between man and man, or in mat- 
ters of trust ; oppression, extortion, usury, bri- 
bery, vexatious law-suits, unjust enclosures, and 
depopulations ; engrossing commodities to en- 
hance the price, unlawful callings, and all other 
unjust ways of taking or withholding from our 
neighbor what belongs to him, or of enriching 
ourselves ; covetousness, inordinate bringing 
and affecting worldly goods ; distrustful and 
distracting cares and studies, in getting, keeping 
and using them ; envying at the prosperity of 
others ; as likewise idleness, prodigality, waste- 
ful gaming, and all other ways whereby we do 
unduly prejudice our own outward estate and 
16* 



186 



SERMON VIII. 



defraud ourselves of the due use and com- 
fort of that outward estate which God hath 
given us." 

We find in these statements repeated refer- 
ence to the duties we owe ourselves, and those 
dependant on us ; duties doubtless in accord- 
ance with the spirit of this command ment, 
though not included in its letter. Thus the 
apostle says : " If any provide not for his own, 
and especially for those of his own house, he 
has denied the faith and is worse than an infi- 
del." Those who framed the above answers 
seem to have regarded the eighth commandment 
as an abstract of all the scripture doctrine on the 
subject of property. 

All this, as you have doubtless already re- 
flected, bears hard upon many customs of trade 
and business, And yet, w T ould it not be diffi- 
cult to show any of these specifications to be 
out of place ? In w 7 hat particular would a man 
who truly loved his neighbor as himself, and 
actually did to others as he would that they 
should do to him, depart from these rules ? Do 
not let us say that this would prove too much : 
that it would excuse ourselves by showing that 
all men are guilty. Common custom, and the 
force of insensible and unreflecting habit, may 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 187 



doubtless palliate to a certain extent, though it 
can never wholly excuse, the wrong conduct 
of those who have the Bible in their hands, 
and a conscience within their breasts. But 
if it be true, that " the times of ignorance 
God winked at," it is also true that there are 
times when He "calleth on all men every where 
to repent." Such a time is that, when our duty 
and our error are brought to our knowledge and 
remembrance. If we, my hearers, have hereto- 
fore insensibly, and therefore with some degree 
of palliation, infringed upon the outermost 
limits of that law of love to our neighbor w hich 
forbids us to further our own interests at the 
expense of his, that palliation will cease to exist 
from this moment, when w T e are distinctly re- 
minded of our duty towards him as well as to- 
wards ourselves. 

Nor let it be said that such a view of the 
eighth commandment would wholly preclude 
the possibility of trade. These principles^ 
acted out, might indeed somewhat change the 
course of trade ; they might render its gains in 
some cases less rapid ; but they would be more 
sure ; for the game of over-reaching, is one 
" that two can play at ; " and very often, rapid 
gain by taking advantage of another's ignorance 



188 



SERMON VIII. 



is followed by as rapid losses, through our own 
ignorance or inadvertence. Nor would it even 
be true that all trade would necessarily be of 
this moderate kind, and all its gains gradual. 
Changes in markets might occur, from a variety 
of causes, which w 7 ould prevent the trader from 
being confined to the simple profits that should 
remunerate his daily toil. And while it is by no 
means certain, that any come quite up to the 
scripture standard in this matter, do not many 
amass wealth by a regular and conscientious 
traffic, much faster than they could do by mere 
manual labor, thus using, — what many abuse, — - 
their talent for business. 

However this may be, we may at least con- 
clude, that no trade can in the end be a real 
blessing, to a community or to individuals, 
which a just and proper construction of the law 
of God, would prevent. And as to the sub- 
ject of markets, those who best know how they 
are regulated and changed, can best understand 
me when I say that there is great danger and 
temptation at this point. If I regulate the 
market by deception, and thus gain an exorbi- 
tant return for my commodities, how much bet- 
ter is it than gaining my neighbor's property by 
any other species of deceit ? Just imagine an 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 189 

angel over-reaching a brother angel in this 
way ! Or the apostle Paul to have sold Peter 
some food or raiment at an advanced price, be- 
cause of its scarcity, when he well knew a large 
supply was on the way, which would by the 
next day put it in his brother's power to buy at 
half the price ! The case, I need not say, is 
different, when both parties possess equal infor- 
mation, and agree to await the consequences 
of mutual risk. But all trade founded on de- 
ception, all gain received without the voluntary 
and intelligent consent of the other party, must 
be set down as contrary to the spirit of the 
eighth commandment. 

An important topic to be considered and un- 
derstood, in connexion with this subject, is that 
of losses suffered by others through our in- 
debtedness to them, which we have not the 
means of discharging. It is a clear point, that 
misfortune is not a crime, though it is too often 
thus regarded and treated by the laws, as wit- 
ness the barbarous custom of imprisonment for 
debt without fraud. Such a statute is a disgrace 
to any code ; yet it is suffered to pollute the 
pages of many statute-books from which God 9 s 
just and eternal law of capital punishment is 
attempted to be erased, 



190 



SERMON Till. 



Still, two things are to be considered. One 
is, that to incur debts which we have no reason- 
able prospect of paying, is not compatible with 
duty, either to God or man ; the other, that the 
creditor should know what our prospect is, and 
thus be able to trust us not only voluntarily but 
intelligently i — at least that we give him no 
false statement, no wrong impression. When 
against our reasonable hopes and strict endeav- 
ors, misfortune and ruin have overtaken us, either 
through fire, or shipwreck, or the dishonesty of 
others, or the fallibility of our own judgment, 
it only remains, that with no fraud or conceal- 
ment, we should seek, so far as possible, to re- 
pair the losses we have occasioned to others. 

In doing this, we are not obliged to starve 
ourselves ; for the unfortunate as w ell as the 
prosperous have aright to a living in the world: 
and our settled and honest purpose for ultimate 
remuneration may require some legal defence 
against the rapacity or revenge of individual 
creditors. But the idea of wealthy bankruptcy 
is assuredly condemned by every principle of 
justice and of equity. As to legal releases, and 
subsequent full remuneration, I will only say, 
that in the millennium, if there should be trade 
and misfortunes then, it will probably be a less 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 



191 



uncommon, and a less admired occurrence, for a 
man to perform such an act of extra-legal jus- 
tice, than it now is. 

I have said nothing concerning the gross and 
literal offences against the eighth commandment, 
— and yet perhaps I ought. There may be in- 
dividuals here who have been, or who may be, 
tempted to steal. Some of these children may 
be tempted to take a school-fellow's book or 
toy. Some of these youth may be tempted, — 
how many well educated youths have been, — ■ 
to relieve a want, or to gratify an appetite, by 
the commission of theft. 

Oh, my young friends, start back with hor- 
ror from the first, the slightest, offence. Once 
begin, and you know not where you will end. 
It was bat last week that I was called to visit 
in a gloomy cell of yonder prison, a young man, 
but a little while since respectable and happy, 
now disgraced and wretched. Could you have 
seen him in his shame and miser v. and heard 
his bitter regrets, uttered with a trembling 
voice, you w 7 ould feel the force of God's words 
when He says, " Thou shalt not steal," and 
" The way of transgressors is hard." I can- 
not forbear to add, that needless expenses for 
amusements, for decorations of dress, for deli- 



192 



SERMON VIII. 



cacies of food, and for stimulating drinks and 
other useless and hurtful indulgences, have in 
many cases brought young persons to disgrace 
and ruin. If children and youth would avoid the 
effect, let them avoid the cause ; and all juve- 
nile dishonesty so far I have observed, has 
sprung from other vicious or extravagant habits. 

Thus, my hearers, I have endeavored to give 
you an outline of the scripture teachings on the 
subject of honesty. It has, I am aware, been 
but little more than an outline. Perhaps you* 
expected a more minute detail. But specific 
rules of conduct can hardly be given, and if 
given, w r ould not in all cases be safe guides. 
I doubt not there is much of the essence of dis- 
honesty under a legal, and even an honest guise ; 
and on the other hand a pure and honest inten- 
tion may assume to one ignorant of business, 
an unfavorable aspect. The latter case, how- 
ever, is more rare. While that which appears 
right, may often be wrong, that which appears 
wrong, can very seldom be right. 

I regard the whole subject of justice between 
man and man, as one of the highest practical 
importance. And I earnestly wish, that some 
qualified writer, — and in order to be qualified, 
he must be, or have been, an intelligent Chris- 



THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT. 193 



tian merchant or man of business, — would pro- 
duce a work which should be a book of reference 
for cases of conscience, and which should grad- 
ually and silently work those changes in some 
business habits, which high Christian morality 
seems imperiously to demand. 

I fear that in most transactions, from the 
petty traffic of boyhood, up to manly bargains, 
and even national compacts and boundary ques- 
tions, there is too little of doing as we would 
be done by, — too little of loving our neighbor 
as ourselves. The law of God, concerning hon- 
esty, although somewhat general, yet w T ith the 
aid of a quick and well instructed conscience, 
will be a sufficient guide. 

Above all, let us remember that our Creator 
has claims upon us, which we can neither hon- 
estly, nor gratefully, nor safely, refuse to admit 
and to satisfy. And while He commands us to 
give to every man his due, His language to us 
is : " My son, give ME thy heart" He asks no 
more. He will accept no less. Let us not de- 
fraud Him of this just right, lest He say to us 
as He did to the Jews, " Ye have robbed Me." 
17 



SERMON IX 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT- 
EXODUS 20 : 16. 

THOU SHALT NOT BEAR FALSE WITNESS AGAINST THY 
NEIGHBOR. 

This commandment 5 though not always so un- 
derstood, is intended to forbid every species of 
falsehood. The resemblance of a part of its 
language to that which is applied to testimony 
given in courts of justice, has led to the impres- 
sion that it is directed only against judicial per- 
jury ; while the phrase, " against thy neighbor, 55 
has seemed to limit its meaning still farther, 
leaving it to apply only to the crime of slander ; 
as if it w T ere designed only to prohibit a sin 
against our neighbor's reputation, like those 



196 



SERMON IX. 



sins against his life and his property, which the 
sixth and the eighth commandments forbid. 

Such is undoubtedly one main bearing of this 
command ; and yet there are several reasons 
for understanding it, as was said above, to con- 
tain a prohibition of all falsehood. Otherwise, 
there is no statute in the Decalogue directed 
against a crime, which the history of the world 
shows to be one of the most common, and 
which the Bible elsewhere represents as one 
of the most heinous, of human transgressions. 
As to the phrase " against our neighbor," it 
should be recollected that all our communica- 
tions are with our neighbors, that is, our fellow 
men, and that every sin against truth is there- 
fore a sin, more or less direct and aggravated, 
against them. 

The following extended definition given by 
the Westminster Assembly, though very minute 
and comprehensive, is not, then, I think more 
so, than the spirit of the command warrants. 

" The duties required in the ninth command- 
ment, are. the preserving and promoting of the 
truth between man and man, and the good 
name of our neighbor as well as our own ; ap- 
pearing and standing for, and from the heart, 
sincerely, freely, clearly and fully speaking the 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 



197 



truth, and only the truth, in matters of judg- 
ment and justice, and in all other things what- 
soever ; a charitable esteem of our neighbors ; 
loving, desiring and rejoicing in their good 
name ; sorrowing for and covering of their in- 
firmities ; freely acknowledging their gifts and 
graces, defending their innocency ; a ready re- 
ceiving of a good report, and unwillingness to 
admit of an evil report concerning them ; dis- 
couraging tale-bearers, flatterers and slanderers; 
love and care of our own good name, and de- 
fending it when need requireth, keeping of 
lawful promises, studying and practising of 
whatsoever things are true, honest, lovely and of 
good report. " 

" The sins forbidden in the ninth command- 
ment, are, all prejudicing the truth, and the 
good name of our neighbors as well as our own, 
especially in public Judicature, giving false evi- 
dence, suborning false witnesses, wittingly ap- 
pearing and pleading for an evil cause, outfacing 
and overbearing the truth, passing unjust sen- 
tence, calling evil good and good evil, reward- 
ing the w 7 icked according to the work of the 
righteous, and the righteous according to the 
work of the wicked ; forgery, concealing the 
17* 



198 



SERMON IX. 



truth ; undue silence in a just cause, and hold- 
ing our peace when iniquity calleth for either 
a reproof from ourselves or complaint to others ; 
speaking the truth unseasonably, or maliciously 
to a wrong end, or perverting it to a wrong 
meaning, or in doubtful and equivocal expres- 
sions to the prejudice of truth or justice, speak- 
ing untruth, lying, slandering, backbiting, de- 
tracting, tale-bearing, w r hispering, scoffing, re- 
viling, rash, harsh, and partial censuring, mis- 
construing intentions, words and actions, flat- 
tering, vain-glorious boasting, thinking or speak- 
ing too highly or too meanly of ourselves or 
others, denying the gifts and graces of God, 
aggravating smaller faults, hiding, excusing or 
extenuating of sins when called to a free con- 
fession, unnecessary discovering of infirmities, 
raising false rumors, receiving and countenanc- 
ing evil reports, and stopping our ears against 
just defence, evil suspicion, envying or grieving 
at the deserved credit of any, endeavoring or 
desiring to impair it, rejoicing in their disgrace 
and infamy, scornful contempt, fond admiration, 
breach of lawful promises, neglecting such 
things as are of good report, and practising or 
not avoiding ourselves, or not hindering what we 
can in others, such things as procure an ill name. 5? 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 



199 



Considering the ninth commandment as a 
prohibition of all falsehood, and of that false- 
hood especially, which injures our neighbor's 
good name, let us inquire for a moment into 
the foundation of this law. 

I have had occasion more than once in these 
discourses, to refer to the distinction between 
those duties which become such only by God's 
appointment, and of which natural conscience 
takes no cognizance, and those which are so 
connected w T ith the welfare of men, and so 
written on their hearts, that they cannot be 
mistaken. 

The duty of veracity is of the latter class. 
Abstractly considered, it might appear to be- 
long to the other. But such is the nature and 
extent of human intercommunication, that ve- 
racity is never an abstraction. The great prin- 
ciples of natural justice require every man to 
"speak the truth to his neighbor;" and false- 
hood is universally felt to be wrong, except 
when conscience is so nearly dead that even 
theft and murder cease to cause remorse. 

And no other crime against either God or 
man is more universal, in its extent among all 
classes of society, both in heathen and in chris- 
tian lands. Travellers have told us of nations 



200 



SERMON IX. 



where truth as a virtue is wholly unknown ; 
travellers, too, who could hardly be suspected 
of entertaining us with that particular branch 
of falsehood, appropriately styled, "travellers' 
wonders," which so often and so well illustrate 
the prevalence of this sin. 

With all writers on ethics, I shall consider 
the essence of falsehood to consist in an inten- 
tion to deceive. It matters not that this inten 
tion is or is not acted out, or that the deception 
is designed or accomplished in one mode or 
another. The consequences may differ. The 
degrees of guilt, too, may vary ; as we may 
suppose a man wicked enough to intend a crime 
which conscience holds him back from perpe- 
trating, that is, which he is not wicked enough 
to commit. Where, however, the act of de- 
ception is done or attempted to be done, the 
mode is a matter of little consequence, — we 
may say none at all, — as to the degree of guilt. 
A written, or a silent lie, may be no less sinful 
than a spoken one. 

The question is often asked, "Is it ever 
right to deceive ?" One principal case of 
doubt to which the inquiry refers, is that of 
an idiot or madman, whether made such by 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 



201 



intoxication or other cause, either permanent 
or temporary. Such deception as may be ne- 
cessary for his own safety or that of others, has 
been commonly, and I think rightly defended, 
on the ground that being for the time at least, 
without mind, he is in a moral respect beyond 
the limits of the rational community, and may 
be restrained and guided as the irrational crea- 
tion may properly be, by stratagem and guile, if 
no other mode presents itself. It should, how- 
ever, be remembered, that in this sense as well 
as others, honesty is the best policy ; and that 
such frauds, when repeated, often lose their 
power; a truth sadly illustrated by the unjusti- 
fiable attempts often made by parents to de- 
ceive their children in respect to taking medi- 
cine or doing other irksome things. 

Another case is that of enemies, robbers, 
and murderers, from whom we have occa- 
sion to defend ourselves. Questions often 
occur, respecting duty under such circum- 
stances, which are of great practical impor- 
tance, demanding instant decision, and ex- 
tremely difficult to settle. As to war, so long 
as it shall exist to curse the world, it is ob- 
viously desirable that it should be carried on in 
a mode as consistent with humanity and truth 



202 



SERMON IX. 



as possible. As to cases in which life or pro- 
perty is put at hazard by individual violence, it 
is difficult to conceive of an obligation to a pi- 
rate or murderer, to tell him the truth, so strong 
as the law of self-preservation. And while 
great caution should be exercised in judging in 
such cases, and great care taken to avoid low- 
ering the standard of duty in our own con- 
science, — which would be a far greater evil 
than loss of property, — -yet with reference to 
such cases we cannot, I think, safely say that 
it is never right to deceive. 

Another class of practical questions relate to 
secrets which others have no right to know, 
and which it would be impossible to disclose 
without leaving some impression different from 
the actual truth. Here, the old maxim, " the 
truth should not be spoken at all times" has a 
real, — though it should be a very guarded, ap- 
plication. 

After all, these doubtful cases are compara- 
tively of rare occurrence, and a well instructed 
and well kept conscience will seldom find diffi- 
culty in making a right and a prompt decision. 
And as to these apparent exceptions to the rule 
of strict and uniform veracity, they should be 
regarded as only apparent It is not that false- 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 203 



hood becomes right, in such cases, but that 
something which would be falsehood under 
other circumstances, becomes a justifiable re- 
servation. Who would call it an act of false- 
hood to deceive and entrap a wild beast ? And 
wherein differs from this, the act by which I 
mislead a furious maniac, or an imbruted drunk- 
ard, and thus save his life or my own ? 

These apparent exceptions, too, as was said 
above, are extremely rare. They need not be 
kept in view or anticipated. Men have lived 
and died without finding them. And it is only 
because I wish to present a thorough view, at 
least an entire outline, of this important subject 
of veracity, that I have alluded to them at all. 
In this as well as other things, the best rule is, 
to do right, and trust God with the conse- 
quences. 

Let us now briefly notice some of the more 
prominent classes of falsehoods against which 
it becomes us all to guard, as lovers of truth, 
and as the subjects of a God of truth, who will 
exclude from His holy kingdom whatsoever 
"maketh a lie." And here I cannot but refer 
you, for a more full and minute discussion of 
the subject, to the admirable work of Mrs, 



204 



SERMON IX. 



Opie, who has given us in her "Illustrations of 
lying," an almost faultless manual of truth. 

L The first form of falsehood I shall men- 
tion is Perjury. This is the uttering of known 
untruths under the solemnity of an oath or af- 
firmation. It differs from other falsehood chief- 
ly in that it is more deliberate. The impreca- 
tion of the Divine displeasure in case of perjury 
can hardly be supposed to add to the certainty 
that that displeasure will be felt and expressed. 
But the crime itself would be the greater, when 
committed with that ample opportunity for re- 
flection, and after that appeal to the sentiments 
of duty and the fear of God, which every pub- 
lic administration of an oath should afford. 

And here let me say that I have often been 
struck with what has appeared to me a most 
serious evil, in the mode of procedure in this 
matter in courts of justice. The hasty and ir- 
reverent manner in which the form is repeated 
by the officer, in many cases to young or igno- 
rant witnesses, and often to several at once, is 
fitted to shock every serious listener, and to 
frustrate all the designs of this grave and time- 
honored solemnity. If a kind and serious word 
of instruction and caution were uttered by the 
Judge, and then the formula repeated by the 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 205 



proper officer in a slow and reverent manner, to 
each witness or juror separately, cases of per- 
jury would be less frequent, and the dignity 
which should surround every judicial tribunal 
would be better preserved. 

While upon the subject of courts, let me ob- 
serve, too, that jurors, as well as witnesses, 
should "fear an oath," — and that the cases of 
compromise, or of yielding to the opinion of 
others, which are so common, are hardly consis- 
tent with the solemn engagements of every 
juror to be guided by his own judgment. May 
I be allowed still farther to suggest, that coun- 
sel, — surrounded as they are by the solemnities 
of an oath, though not themselves sworn, ought 
to be extremely careful, lest in their zeal for 
their clients, they unconsciously take the place 
of witnesses, declaring their firm belief as indi- 
viduals, of what perhaps seems extremely doubt- 
ful to all others, and afterwards even to them- 
selves. The opinion of a well known lawyer, 
deliberately and solemnly expressed, would go 
even farther than the testimony of some wit- 
nesses, in influencing a jury. But no counsel 
is under obligation to become a witness as well 
as advocate, especially to contradict by a gra- 
18 



206 



SERMON IX. 



tuitous declaration his own secret convictions of 
truth. 

II. Next to false oaths I place false promises. 
These may be either deliberate or careless. 
They relate to almost every interest of human 
life, involving much injustice, both fraudulent 
and unintentional, and leading to miscalculations 
and disappointments which have done much to 
embitter society. I will specify only that class 
of false promises which relate to the accomplish- 
ment of work or the discharge of pecuniary en- 
gagements, which the promiser knows, or may 
know, it will not be in his power to fulfil. Such 
promises are often made by persons in almost 
every occupation, with the intention of securing 
employment ; but nothing can more thoroughly 
displease any man than to be disappointed in 
this manner. Interest and duty combine to 
demand of every man of business, whether of a 
mechanical, commercial or professional kind, 
to be punctual in fulfilling his engagements, and 
to promise nothing but what he can perform. 

III. I next mention false signs. Suppose 
a traveller, on the approach of a dark night, ap- 
plies to you for information respecting two roads, 
one of which leads to a neighboring city, and the 
other will plunge him into a dense and danger- 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 



207 



ous forest. You designedly send him in the 
wrong direction. He perishes. Does it mat- 
ter as to your guilt, whether you accomplish the 
act of deception by words or by signs ? — by an 
inclination of the head, or pointing with the 
hand ? — Plainly not. And what shall we say, 
on this principle, of those false marks upon goods, 
and the other numerous devices both in trade 
and in the intercourse of society, by which 
wrong impressions are designedly communi- 
cated ? 

IV. Let us next notice false declarations, 
These are of many kinds, and uttered with vari- 
ous motives. Sometimes they are spoken care- 
lessly, with no settled purpose of deception, ex- 
cept so far as to produce a temporary impres- 
sion upon the mind of the hearer. This is the 
case with what have been called 66 falsehoods of 
exaggeration. 55 They spring from the love of 
the marvellous, so strongly implanted in the 
human heart. Some men, especially, seem to 
look on things in the manner it has been imag- 
ined that the brute creation, through some pecu- 
liarity in the structure of the visual organs, 
look on man, — as greatly magnified. They 
would not for their lives deceive you as to any 
important matter ; and yet they never give you 



208 



SERMON IX, 



a literal description or a right impression of any 
event they undertake to relate. There are other 
exaggerations even less pardonable ; when men 
to enjoy the surprise of others, purposely deal in 
the declaration of wonders that never occurred. 
But in whatever form it appears, exaggeration 
is always evil. Practised as it is almost uncon- 
sciously, by some good men, it injures their in- 
fluence, and has sometimes almost destroyed 
their character for veracity. 

Other false declarations are made in civility ? 
taking the form of compliments, untrue expres- 
sions of regard, and the like 5 by which the 
moral tone of society is weakened and great in- 
jury done in many ways. False statements, 
too, of a more delicate kind, for the sake of 
gain, or vanity, or malice, come under this gen- 
eral head. And some persons seem to be im- 
pelled by a love for lying, to utter what may be 
termed gratuitous falsehoods, a form of de- 
pravity happily rare in enlightened states of 
society. 

Having thus endeavored to present, not so 
much a description, as a bare catalogue, of the 
various species of falsehoods, which in the work 
already referred to you will find drawn out at 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 209 



greater length and admirably illustrated, I pro- 
ceed to a few closing remarks. 

1. Falsehood, in all its forms, is one of the 
most detestable sins which are forbidden by- 
God, or committed by man. This is true, 
whether we estimate it by the light of scripture, 
or of conscience, or of its history in the world. 
" All liars," we are expressly assured, " shall 
have their part in the lake that burneth with 
fire and brimstone." 

Whatsoever " maketh a lie," is also men- 
tioned in the list of what is to be excluded 
from the holy city of God. The moral sense, 
too, brands falsehood as a crime ; and while 
one ancient nation made deception and con- 
cealment a virtue, and punished their children 
not for stealing, but for suffering themselves to 
be detected, this was only another evidence 
that they disobeyed the " law written in their 
hearts," and not that this unwritten law was 
unrevealed to them. 

And then the effects of lying; how have 
they filled the earth ! Well is Satan called the 
father of lies. The progeny is worthy of the 
sire. Blot falsehood and its consequences from 
the history of the world, and you leave it a 
comparatively peaceful and pleasant tale. May 
18* 



210 



SERMON IX. 



God hasten the time when " every man shall 
speak the truth with his neighbor." To this 
end, I remark in the next place, 

2. Parents, guardians, and teachers cannot 
be too solicitous to check the tendency to false- 
hood, at its earliest appearance in the young. 
On this point many parents are extremely 
remiss. Their whole system of management is 
in substance like that of the Spartans just al- 
luded to. They first set the child a perni- 
cious example, by their carelessly uttered and 
soon forgotten threats and promises, — not for- 
gotten by the child,— -and then by punishing 
him less promptly and severely for lying than 
for any other fault, in effect offer a bounty up- 
on falsehood, and as it were bribe him to imi- 
tate their own evil habits. 

A teacher once informed me that she had a 
pupil remarkable for her want of veracity. As 
the child had respectable parents, and had evi- 
dently been in many particulars well brought 
up, this strange " lying spirit " was a great 
mystery to the teacher. One evening during 
a visit to the child's mother, the mystery was 
explained. The child was unwilling to leave 
the room at her usual hour for sleep, alleging 
her wish to see her teacher longer. The 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT. 



211 



mother assured her that the teacher would leave 
directly, well knowing that in so saying she 
uttered a falsehood. The child then consented 
to go ; but awaking during the evening, and 
crying, she was pacified by another false assur- 
ance from her mother, that the teacher was 
gone. 

This was overheard by the latter, who from 
that time pursued a course by which the child 
soon became as to all her school deportment, a 
pattern of veracity. This course was no other 
than to punish her for no fault which was 
frankly confessed. With such examples at 
home, however, a thorough reformation could 
not be expected. 

3. My third remark relates to the specific 
branch of falsehood mentioned in the text. I 
mean slander. Sins against reputation are ex- 
ceedingly common, and are, if 1 mistake not, the 
parents of much other falsehood. It is much 
to be regretted that persons form so large a part 
of the material for conversation. The saying 
of the wise man, " In the multitude of words 
there wanteth not sin*" is peculiarly applicable 
to words uttered concerning character. Is there 
not " a more excellent way " for the conducting 
of social intercourse than to devote so much 



212 



SERMON IX. 



time to the discussion of the character and do= 
ings of others ? The old classical maxim, 
" Nothing but good should be spoken of the 
dead," may also well be applied to the ab- 
sent. No one who has observed the course 
of conversation when such is its material, needs 
to be told that more evil than good,— often 
more falsehood than truth, — is uttered. Let 
us be careful how T in any way, and to any 
extent, we " bear false witness against our 
neighbor." 

4. Let me entreat those who have hitherto 
preserved a habit of strict veracity, to prize it 
very highly, and to guard against every tempta- 
tion to infringe upon the truth, even in the 
slightest degree. 

" Oh, what a tangled web we weave, 
When first we venture to deceive." 

In a course of untruth, like all other evil 
courses, it is easy to go forward, and difficult 
to retreat. Avoid even the appearance of evil. 
Avoid the beginnings of evil. And may God 
make you all, followers of truth, as well as of 
every thing else lovely and of good report. 

One thought more, and I have done. The 
text forbids our lying unto men. An apostle 



THE NINTH COMMANDMENT, 



213 



said to Ananias, " Thou has not lied unto men, 
but unto God." Have we vowed unto the 
Lord? Have we promised Him our love and 
service ? Have we sealed such promises at 
His table ? Have we uttered thanks, and ex- 
pressed resolutions, to Him ? Let us remem- 
ber that though He cannot be deceived, yet the 
crime and the punishment of an attempt at de- 
ceiving God, as well as men, may be incurred. 
From both the one and the other may the God 
of Truth preserve us, 



SERMON X, 



THE TE.XTH COMMANDMENT: 

EXODUS 20 : 17. 

THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR^ HOUSE, THOU 
SHALT NOT COTET THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE, NOR HIS 
MAN-SERVANT, NOR HIS MAID-SERVANT, NOR HIS OX, 
NOR HIS ASS, NOR ANY THING THAT IS THY NEIGH- 
BOR'S. 

The heart of man is a world of desire. If 
the object of his wishes be worthy of his dignity 
and destiny, the strength of desire cannot be ex- 
cessive. Who ever too strongly wished for the 
blessing of forgiveness from God ? Who ever 
panted too eagerly to become a partaker of the 
divine nature ? Who ever inordinately desired 
a treasure in Heaven ? 



216 



SERMON X. 



But if the object of desire be unlawful, or if a 
lawful object be extravagantly and unduly de- 
sired, then comes perversion and waste. Against 
this double evil, this last statute of the holy 
Decalogue is designed to forewarn and restrain 
us. " Thou shalt not covet," — then follow 
specifications, and then the sweeping clause : 
" Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy 
neighbor's." Here is both a positive and a rela- 
tive duty enjoined ; a sin against ourselves and 
our God, and also one against our neighbor, 
forbidden. 

Let us look at each point separately. 

The letter of the Tenth Commandment has 
respect to our neighbors, that is our fellowmen's 
property, of whatever kind, and particularly for- 
bids our coveting it or any part of it. To covet, 
is strongly to desire. By this is meant more 
than a simple wish. Such a wish, for what we 
have not, may or may not be sinful, according 
to its degree or its object. A man may desire 
an increase of his property, without having a 
covetous, or even a discontented heart. A man 
may wish that he possessed a certain house, or 
farm, or ship, belonging to his neighbor, and 
may endeavor to obtain it, by the offer of a fair 
equivalent, without in an unlawful sense covet- 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 217 



ing that object. Such wishes and such endeav- 
ors are the elements of all trade and commerce, 
and when regulated by honesty and benevolence 
and moderation, they are neither unlawful nor 
hurtful. But to look with envy on what our 
neighbor has, — to desire strongly to make it our 
own, even against what we know to be his in- 
terest and inclination, is to covet it. This feel- 
ing, though not always leading to dishonesty, is 
always the chief element in a dishonest charac- 
ter. Why should I take that which belongs to 
my neighbor, if I did not first desire to possess 
it ? If there were no coveting there would be 
no stealing. 

And this should be a motive to every honest 
man, who wishes to die an honest man, to be- 
ware of covetousness. That usurious oppressor 
who grinds the faces of the poor ; that skilful 
bargain-maker, who ingeniously contrives to 
avoid conviction, perhaps even suspicion, as a 
dishonest man ; that fraudulent dealer, who 
avoids nothing but the stateVprison ; and that 
convict, upon whom these several classes of his 
brethren look down as beneath their pity; — each 
began his career with a simple desire for some- 
thing which belonged to his neighbor ; in other 
words, with a slight, and as it may have seemed 
19 



218 



SERMON X. 



to him, insignificant, breach of the tenth com- 
mandment. 

Nay more, the essence of his present guilt 
lies not in the taking, but in the desiring to have ; 
for the taking, without a desire, would be but 
an unintentional act. and therefore 'without 
blame. 

But as I have spoken of fraud and swindling 
and theft, let none imagine that because thev 
are guiltless of these, they have kept the tenth 
commandment from their youth up. T-hough 
a man cannot be dishonest without being cove- 
tous, he may covet without dishonesty ; he may- 
break the tenth commandment without trans- 
gressing the eighth. 

He who allows himself to compare his neigh- 
bor's possessions with his own. and to dwell 
much in his thoughts upon that by which God 
has distinguished others above himself, is guilty 
of the sin of coveting. He transgresses the 
great law of brotherhood, by obedience to which 
without envy or grudging, men would rejoice in 
each other's welfare : even while patiently bear- 
ing their own calamities. 

It is true, the poor may innocently desire the 
aid of the rich, as a child might seek the assis- 
tance of a stronger or more fortunate brother ; 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 219 

for it is a part of the law of brotherhood, that 
we should bear one another's burdens, and so 
fulfil the law of Christ. 

It is also true, as in substance observed be- 
fore, that we may desire each other's posses- 
sions on terms mutually advantageous or sup- 
posed to be so, as children of the same family 
may without envy or fraud make changes in 
the occupancy of their toys or other juvenile 
possessions. The rich man might even desire 
and obtain that one little lamb of his neighbor, 
by the touching story of which the prophet so 
eloquently rebuked the sinning monarch, pro- 
vided this transfer were made with mutual con- 
sent and to mutual advantage. 

But what if a child, forgetting or undervalu- 
ing either the nature or number of the good 
things given him by his father, should look with 
sullen envy, and with secret desires, and per- 
haps designs, of possession at those which be- 
long to his brother. O ! how entirely, how 
flagrantly, how offensively to God does every 
covetous desire for the good things possessed by 
another, transgress both the spirit and the letter 
of that divine and comprehensive command, 
i; Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 



220 



SERMON X, 



I have spoken of covetousness as the parent 
of fraud; let me now speak of discontent as 
the parent of covetousness. To be dissatisfied 
with what we have, is to desire something 
which we have not ; and as most things which 
we have not are in the possession of our fellow 
men, there is but a step between desiring 
what is not our own and coveting what is 
another's. Nor is this all. God, as was ob- 
served in a former discourse, is the great Pro- 
prietor of all things. It cannot be a less, though 
a different sin, inordinately to desire what He 
withholds, than eagerly to covet what another 
of his creatures, by his gift, possesses. The 
Bible speaks of robbing God ; and we may cer- 
tainly imagine such a thing as coveting horn him, 
Covetousness, therefore, whether towards 
God or our fellow men, is but the child of dis- 
content. The Creator holds in his own hands, 
or at least withholds from his creatures, certain 
blessings, such as, at particular times, health, 
or rain, or sunshine. Other blessings, such as 
houses and lands, and gold and silver, He has 
seen fit to bestow on others and not on our- 
selves. Discontented with these allotments, 
we vainly and eagerly wish for what we have 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 221 



not. Does not this involve the sins both of 
ingratitude and rebellion. 

But what is discontent ? Is it to be aware 
of the poverty or other calamities of our condi- 
tion ? Is it to feel keenly the sharp stings of 
sorrow, which God sends to pierce our hearts 
that they may be made better ? Is it to desire 
and pray that our burdens may be lightened 
and our lot made easier ? No. The diseased 
may long and pray for health, the calumniated 
and disgraced may sigh for the blessing of a 
lost and precious reputation. The poor man, 
surrounded by a dependent family, may desire 
and labor that he may have a provision for their 
future and increasing wants. 

But with all these lawful wishes, these 
strenuous endeavors, and these fervent prayers, 
there must be gratitude and submission ; grati- 
tude for what we have, and submission under 
the absence of what w 7 e have not. 

There must be no secret murmuring against 
God ; no envy expressed or unexpressed to- 
wards our fellow men ; no cherished habit of 
comparing their prosperity with our adversity, 
their wealth with our moderate competence or 
poverty, their blessings with our trials. 
19* 



222 



SERMON X. 



There must be no allowed castle building in 
the air, with the materials out of which it has 
pleased God to construct the earthly destiny, 
not of ourselves, but of others. 

That contented mind, which is a continual 
feast, must dwell within us, or we shall, invol- 
untarily perhaps, but not innocently, come in- 
ordinately to desire, first another lot, and then 
the lot of another ; the former a sin against 
God, the latter against our fellow men. And 
though it be easier to admire contentment than 
to possess it, yet how does it commend itself, 
not only as a duty to every man's conscience, 
but to his heart as a blessing without price. 

It should be remembered that discontent can 
never alter our lot ; since it is the course of di- 
vine wisdom to give us not what we wish, but 
what we want ; that is, what He on the whole 
judges to be most conducive to our highest good. 
We have reason also to reflect that we have 
more blessings and fewer trials than we deserve ; 
that many others have a harder lot than our- 
selves ; and that in proportion as wealth or hap- 
piness is denied, in the same proportion is the 
dreadful chance diminished of our having all 
our good things in this life. 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 



There is moreover no condition which con- 
tentment may not make endurable ; while the 
highest measure of wealth or prosperity, with a 
discontented temper may but serve to illustrate 
the homely maxim, " the more man has the 
more he wants.' 5 

My hearers, will you study contentment ? 
It is not an art to be learned in a day ; it de- 
mands the labor of a life ; but unlike most other 
objects of desire, its cost can never exceed its 
value. 

There is one kind of covetousness which the 
Bible not only permits, but enjoins. The 
apostle Paul has said, " Covet earnestly the 
best gifts.* 5 Contentment is certainly one of 
them. I pray God, you may all have it. God 
is willing to bestow it. Your having it will 
leave none the less for others. And yet it is 
not a common possession, far less common than 
wealth, and less common, I fear, even than 
that rare jewel piety itself ; and yet, " a discon- 
tented christian!" what a phrase! what a 
thought! Is it, my hearers, a phantom of my 
own imagination ? Would to God it were. 
For if there were no discontented Christians 
there would be no covetous, unhappy, worldly 
minded Christians ; fewer inconsistent, useless 



224 



SERMON X. 



Christians ; and fewer through the false lights 
of their examples, mere nominal, deceived 
castaway Christians. 

But how difficult to be contented ! how 
difficult to know 7 whether we are contented ! 
So that man found it, who on hearing that a 
fortune had heen offered to any man who was 
perfectly satisfied with his present condition, im- 
mediately applied for himself. The answer he 
received was this : " If you are satisfied with 
w 7 hat you have, w 7 hy ask for more ? How 
easy to say or even to think that we are con- 
tented, — how difficult and how rare to be so ! 

Thus, my hearers, I have endeavored to un- 
fold the elements of the sin of covetousness. I 
have endeavored to show 7 you where the roots 
of this noxious tree, springing in the fertile soil 
of an ungrateful heart, and nurtured by the tears 
of a discontented spirit, send upwards the un- 
sightly trunk, and the poisonous sap, which 
shall bear all manner of fruit except that w 7 hich 
is good. Envy, hatred, avarice, fraud, violence, 
and even murder itself, have all sprung from it. 

Like the fabulous poison tree of Java, it 
diffuses sterility and death around it. The 
earth, which it overshadows, brings forth 
nothing useful ; and even those birds of heaven, 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 225 



sweet messengers from God, Faith, Hope, 
and Charity, with all good thoughts and holy 
feelings, alight not and scarcely hover near it. 

Of its fruits, which are also its marks and 
evidences, I cannot attempt to give a detailed 
catalogue. But that the force of the subject 
may not lose itself in generalities, we will look 
at a few of them. 

1. I first mention avarice, This is a mean, 
sordid love of gain, for its own sake. It is 
the crime and curse of the miser. It is often 
confounded with the sin of coveting, and men 
because they love not gold for its own sake, — 
because they never knew the luxury of count- 
ing guineas by lamp light, — have supposed 
themselves clear from all violations of the tenth 
commandment. 

Avarice, however, is neither the root, nor 
the trunk, of the tree of covetousness; it is but 
a topmost branch, or rather a rare and mon- 
strous fruit, of that tree. And yet it never 
comes from any other source. No discontented, 
covetous, worldly minded man has any security 
against the dreadful day that should find him a 
miser. 

Of all idolatries, of all crimes against God, 
and against the life and image of God in the 



SERMON X, 



soul of man, this, if not the greatest, is the 
meanest. Of all the gods of this world the j 
golden god is most senseless and contemptible. 
He has eyes, but he sees not ; ears has he but 
he hears not ; a nose has he, but he smells not ; ! t 
neither speaks he through his throat. And yet I f 
his image and superscription on a coin or a 
bank note, or set forth to the diseased eye of 
the miser, on the walls of his houses or the sur- 11 
face of his lands, is adored with a fervor and i v 
constancy, which should shame the Christian's 
intermitted and lukewarm devotions. 

I trust that in none of my hearers, the love " 
of gain has yet taken the form of avarice. 

I would rather see even reckless enterprise, c 
rash adventure, extravagant prodigality, the 1 ' 
highest indulgence in the pride of life, ruinous t 
as these things are, than to know that you had j 1 
become base idolaters of gold, seeking to have 
for the sake of having, and mortifying the ap- > 1 
petites of the flesh, to gratify this mean and 
morbid and inamiable appetite of the spirit. 
But if. there are to be, — which may Heaven 1 
forbid,- — misers among those whom I address, 
I know full well that they will come from those 
who now least regard the spirit of the tenth 
commandment. 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 227 

2. Another consequence and symptom of 
covetousness is the making haste to be rich. 
This is done in various ways, and with various 
ostensible motives. There are, too, various de- 
grees of haste ; all of which, however, in differ- 
ent proportions, illustrate the old saying, that 
" haste makes waste : " waste alwavs of com- 
fort, — sometimes of conscience and a good 
name — and often, in the end, of the very 
wealth which is its object. 

Among the most pernicious of those means 
by which men make haste to be rich, are the 
lottery, the card table, the billiard room, and 
the various contrivances classed under the gen- 
eral head of gaming, — contrivances which have 
beggared more men, and ruined more souls, 
than any other of Satan's devices. Like so 
many burning glasses they collect and concen- 
trate the scattered rays of this passion, — the 
love of gain, — till it consumes the very soul. 
They take out the heart of a man from their 
victim and their dupe, and put w T ithin him the 
! heart of a gambler. 

Another form of making haste to be rich, 
less glaring in its evil nature and tendencies 
than the last, and therefore more easily beguil- 
ing wise and even pious men, is that of specu- 



228 



SERMON X. 



latum in stocks and houses and lands, when 
sudden changes in the nominal value, not de- 
pendant on the real value, and therefore not to 
be w calculated on with certainty, present all the 
hope, and awaken all the excitement, and pro- 
duce nearly all the evils of a vast lottery. 

Another class of men, enterprising, honest 
and discreet, who rise up early and sit up 
late, and eat the bread of carefulness, giving 
their days to toil and their nights to calculation, 
little dream, that it is an inordinate and hurtful 
desire of gain, by which they are actuated. 

They suppose that it is the voice of duty, 
duty to themselves, or to their families, or to 
some public enterprise, or it may be to the 
treasury of the Lord; which is bidding them 
thus to sacrifice health, comfort, mental im- 
provement, and social enjoyments and duties in 
the family, upon the altar of mammon. They 
make haste to be rich, w hile death is making 
haste to overtake them. They are not content 
with such things as they have, or with moder- 
ately and steadily adding to those things. 
They, too, should be fearful lest covetousness 
which is idolatry, should, before they are aw T are, 
weave its meshes around their hearts. The 
green withes by w r hich Sampson was bound 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 229 



were not stronger. And it will be well for 
them if the grace of God shall ever impart a 
strength greater than Sampson's to rend those 
bonds asunder. 

3. Another fruit and evidence of covetous- 
ness is envy towards those whose condition in 
life is superior to our own. Love of the world 
is not confined to those who have most of the 
world to love. I may value the wealth of my 
neighbor more highly than he does. I may de- 
sire to obtain it, more strongly than he desires 
to keep it, or to add to it. If I do sx>, I am the 
worldly minded, covetous, man, though all my 
gains and my hopes should be on the smallest 
possible scale. The beggar may curse in his 
heart the pride of the prince, when the prince, 
if he had the beggar's heart, would be a thou- 
sand fold more proud than he now is. 

Men as often look upwards as downwards, 
to this object of their adoration, and covetous- 
ness is no respecter of persons or of conditions. 
Let the poor as well as the rich beware of coy- 
etousness ; and let us all remember that to 
grudge others what we have not, is no less 
sinful than to be proud and idolatrous of what 
we have. 

20 



230 



SERMON X. 



My hearers, I have thus imperfectly spread 
before you the great sin of covetousness. I 
have endeavored to show you its root, its 
branches, and some of its fruits. I have called 
it a great sin. The Bible declares it to be 
idolatry. It is against both God and our neigh- 
bor. It injures ourselves. It is the parent of 
hatred and fraud and violence. Most of the 
quarrels, and wars, and usurpations, and out- 
rages, which have disgraced humanity, have 
sprung from it. Slavery is one of its children. 
It is the sin of the whole world. The ancients 
and the moderns, the civilized and the barbar- 
ous, have alike contended more for property 
than for fame or any other object. This is 
the principal subject of litigation, — it leads to 
the principal forms and instances of crime. 

Strange that rational men could have found 
nothing better to contend for, to sin for, and to 
ruin their souls for, than the perishing objects 
of a perishing world, — its houses and lands 
with their equivalents and representatives, — yet 
so it has been ; so it is ; so it will be, till the 
time when with holiness shall come wisdom to 
a world of perverted and enfeebled minds. 

It is, I remark again, the sin of this country. 
We are making haste to be rich ; often, it is 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 231 

true, with little success. And yet, one disap- 
pointment serves but to lure the mind on to 
another endeavor. What a rage for new 
schemes ! — what a rush to the lands of promise 
which like so many eldorados rise to view ! 
What postponement of literary, social, and re- 
ligious advantages, — -and even of health, to the 
prospect of gain. See our Southern cities 
filled, — our Northern prairies covered, with 
swarms of men and women and children, who 
hardly sighed to leave behind them the schools, 
the churches, the social habits, the refinements 
and comforts of New-England, so that they 
might become wealthy ; as if a man's life con- 
sisted in the abundance of things which he 
possesseth ! 

It is a sin, too, of the church ; perhaps her 
great sin. She, like one fabled of old, has 
slackened in the race of godliness, that she 
might gather the golden apples which one more 
subtle than any of the heathen gods, has thrown 
in her way. 

Yes, with Heaven in view, and crowns of 
glory waiting for her, she has turned aside 
to join in the base scramble for the things 
which will disappear when the Christians all 
*hall be safe. Sad, disgraceful scene ! Bitter 



232 



SERMON X. 



have been its results. Already is the church 
needing the advent of Him whose fan is in His 
hand, who will thoroughly purge the threshing 
floor, and gather the wheat into his garner, but 
will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. 
"Ye cannot, 5 ' Christ says, " serve God and 
Mammon." Would to Heaven multitudes had 
known and remembered this, who have strangely 
and fatally forgotten it. 

Some flatter themselves that all is well, be- 
cause their gains are designed for the Lord's 
treasury. But alas ! too often wealth freezes 
instead of warming the heart of its possessor ; 
closes, instead of opening his hands. Not al- 
ways. And yet the Christian's prayer should 
be that of Agur, " Give me neither poverty nor 
riches." Oh, how many places of secret prayer 
would have been kept open which are now 
closed, perhaps forever, if this prayer had been 
offered and granted ! 

Since this is the sin of the world, the country 
and the church, — each should repent of, and 
forsake it. And as I have said that one kind 
of coveting is permitted and enjoined in the 
Bible, let me also remind you of one inspired 
direction how to be rich. It is this : — "God- 



THE TENTH COMMANDMENT. 



233 



liness with contentment is great gain." Let 
us in this suppose " that gain is godliness." 

That great unanswered question ; " What is 
a man profited, if he gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul ? " reminds us that covetous- 
ness may defeat its own end. The treasure in 
Heaven is not lightly to be despised. To have 
died in affluence, and to be buried in splendor 
will not relieve the deep poverty of the soul's 
eternal bankruptcy. It is better to lose the 
wiiole world and save the soul, than to gain the 
whole world at the expense of the soul's loss. 
"May God preserve us from " covetousness 
which is idolatry," and give us all the true 
riches, through Jesus Christ. Amen, 



2G* 



SERMON XI. 



THE WEAKNESS OF THE LAW, AND THE 
POWER OF THE GOSPEL. 

ROMANS 8 : 3, 4. 

FOR WHAT THE LAW COULD NOT DO, IN THAT IT WAS 
WEAK THROUGH THE FLESH, GOD SENDING HIS OWN 
SON IN THE LIKENESS OF SINFUL FLESH, AND FOR SIN, 
CONDEMNED SIN IN THE FLESH ; THAT THE RIGHTE- 
OUSNESS OF THE LAW MIGHT BE FULFILLED IN US, 
WHO WALK NOT AFTER THE FLESH, BUT AFTER THE 
SPIRIT. 

" The Law is holy ; and the Commandment 
holy, and just, and good." So the Great Law- 
giver has asserted. So the very nature of the 
case declares. So the law itself makes mani- 
fest, even on so slight an examination of its 
several statutes, as we have lately undertaken. 



236 



SERMON XI. 



Not a whisper, in God's intelligent universe, 
has ever been heard, questioning either its holi- 
ness, its justice, or its beneficent tendencies, 
except it may have been from that portion of 
the universe probably least qualified to judge of 
its merits. I mean the human race. 

And while even with ignorant and sinful 
man, such objections have been matter of feel- 
ing rather than of opinion, it may be presumed 
that in that only other sinful community of 
which we have any knowledge, a higher degree 
of intelligence has prevented even such a 
thought from arising. So that there is neither 
a spirit lost, nor a spirit blest, but acknowledges 
that the commandment is holy, and just, and 
good ; nor one who is ready to make objection 
against that vast united praise which magnifies 
the glorious Lawgiver as the " Holy, Holy, 
Holy, Lord God Almighty. " 

Such is the Law. Like the Legislator, it is 
perfect, wanting nothing. Yet there are some 
things it could not do. At least, there is one 
thing, — as our text clearly intimates. This is 
not of necessity any disparagement to the law ; 
since if any created object answers one end, or 
whatever number of ends it was expressly de- 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 237 



signed to answer nothing more can justly be 
demanded. 

The Law was intended for a rule of duty ; 
and as such it is perfect. No mariner over a 
trackless sea, was ever guided by the compass 
and the stars more directly and safely to his 
destined port, than would the Law, if strictly 
obeyed, have guided man to holiness and to 
Heaven. 

But as the compass and the stars neither 
amend the defects of the vessel, nor compel the 
mariner wisely to follow their leading ; so does 
not the Law, however holy and wise and good, 
turn men into machines, and oblige them to 
obey it, or diminish by one iota that voluntari- 
ness of choice and action, which will forever 
remain, unchanged both by depravity and sane- 
tification, by probation and reward, 

There are many things, therefore, which the 
Law cannot do. It can never any more than 
the ceremonial Law, — to use the language of 
the apostle, — " make the comers thereunto 
perfect." It has not made the fallen angels so, 
though it was revealed to them in its fullest 
glory and clearness. Nor is it that which has 
made the holy angels so. 

To say that it has no such tendency, would 
be saying more than we know or have reason 



238 



SERMON XI. 



to think. To say that it has not, and of itself 
cannot, produce this result, is but to say that 
this part of Jehovah's designs is to be answered 
by other agencies. 

The Law is simply a statement of the will of 
God, with accompanying promises and threats, 
to obedience on the one hand, and disobedience 
on the other. As far as a desire to please Him, 
or a wish to secure His favor, or avoid His dis- 
pleasure, may be in any case sufficient motives 
to obedience, so far the Law has a tendency to 
make men holy. But these, alas, avail little 
against the torrents of sinful passion, and the 
love of those things w hich are seen and tem- 
poral. 

The Law, then, cannot make any of its sub- 
jects perfect; nor can it justify or save them 
without perfection. No law is designed for the 
benefit of those who transgress it. The friendly 
guide of the ignorant and hesitating, it becomes 
an object of terror to the disobedient ; as we 
may imagine the pillar of fire which guided the 
wandering Israelites to have been the identical 
flame which afterwards broke forth in the re- 
bellious camp, to the alarm and destruction of 
those who had forgotten their leader and their 
Lord. 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL, 239 



Good and virtuous men rejoice in those hu- 
man laws, which at once regulate their own 
consent, and afford them security against the 
wickedness of others. While the criminal him- 
self though he may respect the law, and even 
admit its justice in the punishment it inflicts 
upon him, must as a criminal, look elsewhere for 
hope and pardon. A law which should at once 
forbid crime, and secure impunity to the crim- 
inal, would nullify itself; frustrate its own 
ends ; and be rather an encouragement than a 
i preventive of what it forbids. 

Those then who depend upon the law, are 
debtors to the whole law. " He that keepeth 
the whole law, and yet offend eth in one point, 
is guilty of all;" that is, he is under the con- 
demning and punitive power of the law con- 
sidered as a whole, though not in the same de- 
gree of aggravation, as if he had broken all its 
statutes. So says both reason and scripture. 

If the law can neither make its subjects per- 
fect, nor save them from the consequences of 
their transgression, it follows that another of its 
impossibilities is, the justifying and saving of a 
single soul of Adam's race. 

That no one has ever perfectly obeyed the 
commands of God, I shall not attempt elabor- 



240 



SERMON XI. 



ately to show. The declaration of scripture, 
that there is not a just man on earth that doeth 
good and sinneth not, is too clearly and univer- 
sally confirmed, by the experience and confes- 
sions of mankind, to be misunderstood or de- 
nied, 

Among all the expressions which pride, and 
error, and ignorance, have brought to my ears, 
I have never yet heard the plea of absolute un- 
deviating perfection. I have heard many men 
express a sentiment very different from that of 
the apostle when he said, " By the deeds of the 
law there shall no flesh be justified ; " I have 
heard many declare their full expectation of be- 
ing received to Heaven, because they were 
honest, and industrious, and humane, — in short, 
on the very grounds upon which the young man 
stood, to whom Christ said, " One thing thou 
lackest." But I never found a man who would 
deliberately say, that he had never done wrong ; 
who would considerately aver, that from his 
youth up, he had loved the Lord his God with 
all his heart, and his neighbor as himself. Yet 
no other degree of obedience is perfect; no 
other can entitle us to acquittal ; no other can 
save us, on the simple ground of law, from 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 241 



whatever consequences the Law may attach to 
transgression. 

I have said that no man claims for himself 
the character of absolute and undeviating per- 
fection from his youth up ; in other words, that 
all, when the question is deliberately put, are 
ready to plead guilty to the charge of having to 
some extent transgressed the strict and spiritual 
commands of God. It may be said further, 
that the notion of being " saved by morality," 
so often found to exist, is rather an impression, 
or a bare and indistinct hope, than an opinion. 
It belongs to the heart rather than to the under- 
standing. 

Accordingly, when such an impression is 
communicated either from the Pulpit or the 
Press, it is not so much by what is said as by 
what is not said. It is rather by omission than 
by argument that any preacher or writer, unless 
he teaches that all men will be saved, can min- 
ister to the comfort of those who desire to be 
soothed with the hope of being saved without 
piety towards God, and faith in the Lord Jesus 
Christ. It is, therefore, difficult to point out 
the passage, either in a discourse or in a book, in 
which the doctrine of salvation by good works 
is taught ; while yet is clearly, though nega- 
21 



242 



SERMON XI. 



tively, implied, and thousands are led, if not to 
believe it, yet to adopt it, to rest their souls 
upon it, and, it is greatly to be feared, to lose 
their souls by it. 

Yet who can prove it ? Who can deliberately 
assert it, or trust to it, with the Bible in his 
hands to tell him what the law requires, and a 
conscience within his breast to assure him that 
in ten thousand w r ays he has broken its holy 
commands ? True it is, that every mouth is 
stopped and the whole w r orld become guilty be- 
fore God. If salvation could come only " by 
the Law," then indeed were it better for man 
that he had never been born ; and the long pro- 
bation of the human race would but have in- 
creased the fearfulness of their account, without 
providing for their safety. 

It is very plain, then, what it was which the 
" Law could not do." It is equally plain, tvhy 
it could not do this. The Law was w T eak, not 
through any inherent defect, not through any 
mistake on the part of its Framer, not in any 
way dishonorable, either to Him or to itself. Our 
text explains the whole. " It was w T eak through 
the weakness of the flesh," — sinful flesh, as the 
next clause tells us. Here is the sad and fatal 
defect ; here the dreadful secret of the Law's 
impotence. 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 243 



If it had been obeyed, it would have been 
strong ; strong to save and bless the race of 
man, as was the ark, to bear above the waters 
of the flood the survivors of the old world, who 
were to be the progenitors of the new ; strong 
as the ship in which Jonah embarked that he 
might flee from his God, but which would not 
long have held together, amidst the fury of the 
winds and waves, which had been summoned 
T>y the Lord of the elements to terrify and pun- 
ish the fugitive. 

Nor let it be said, that the law was less a 
blessing to man, than to other beings, — -more 
powerless to do him good, than to bless and 
save other orders of creation. 

It was too weak to save the sinning angels ; 
and it was not its strength that preserved the 
holy ones. 

If it be asked, why different laws were not 
given to different races, or their hearts consti- 
tuted with the same tendencies, and a certainty 
of the same ultimate character and destiny, — 
I reply : To suppose the giving more than one 
law, would be to suppose two standards of right 
with two divine characters as their bases ; and 
as to the original character of the human race, 
all such questions as I have supposed above, 
imply a presumptuous spirit, to which the 



244 



SERMON XI. 



answer of the apostle is highly appropriate ;— 
" Nay, but O man ! who art thou that replies! 
against God ?" Such an objection would come 
w 7 ith a better grace from our lips, if we were 
conscious of having done all in our power to 
counteract whatever evil tendencies our hearts 
since the fall have possessed. However God 
has made us, one thing is certain, that we have 
ruined ourselves. 

It is enough for us to know, and of that I 
trust the recent series of discourses on the 
Commandments has convinced or reminded us, 
that as ice are, the Law is too weak to save 
us ; that whatever it might and would have 
done for us, if we had obeyed it, it can do 
nothing for us now, but to condemn us. 

But I forget myself. Blessed be God, that 
there is one thing more it can do. It can be 
" our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." 
The flames of Sinai may light us, and its 
voices of terror may drive us, to the hill Cal- 
vary. "For what the law could not do, in that 
it was weak through the flesh, God sending His 
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for 
sin, condemned sin in the flesh ; that the righte- 
ousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us, 
who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 



245 



We see, then, that while it was, in a certain 
sense, God's will, to justify and save sinners. 
The Law could not do this. It was weak ; not 
the weakness of imperfection, but the weak- 
ness consequent upon a design and adaptation to 
another end. So the gentle breeze is too weak 
to prostrate the oaks of the forest; and the 
earthquake and the tornado have no power to 
fertilize the earth, or to refresh at evening its 
tired and heated cultivators. Still, this which 
the law could not do, God had determined 
should be done. Consequently means were not 
wanting for its accomplishment. 

And what were they ? Hear O Heavens ! 
and be astonished O Earth ! God sent his 
own Son. What. — I hear it asked, — that Son 
who shared his glory before the world was ? 
That Son who said, "I and my Father are 
one ? n That Son who was called the Word, 
which " Word was God ? " That Son to 
whom the Father said, " Thy throne, O God, 
is forever and ever ? " 

Yes, the same. There is no other Son of 
God. He is not only the well beloved, but the 
only begotten. And He was sent. He whom 
the angels adored ; He whom the saints will 
praise in a new song, in that world where but 
21* 



246 



SERMON XL 



to breathe a human or an angelic name, as an 
object of adoration, would be to send confusion 
through all Heaven's perfect harmony. 

Yes, He was sent. He came, who " was in 
the form of God ; " He took on him not the 
nature of angels, but the likeness of flesh, — yes, 
even of sinful flesh, — though himself without 
sin, that living and suffering for sin, he might 
condemn sin in the flesh. 

Well might the apostle say, " Great is the 
mystery of godliness, God manifest in the 
flesh. And here, the mystery is explained. 
Not explained in such a way as to prevent the 
pride of intellect from saying, " How can these 
things be?" and yet so explained, that the 
Christian need no longer ask in doubt and fear, 
" How can God be just, and yet justify me 
who am a sinner ? " 

We have seen, then, what the law could not 
do ; why it could not do it; that God deter- 
mined it should be done ; and that He sent his 
dear and equal Son, for its accomplishment. 

But how, the question next arises, was it, 
after all, to be done ? By what efforts on the 
part of him who came with the full and gener- 
ous intention to spare no needful effort, was 
this great problem of justification and salvation 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 247 



which the law had failed to work out, to be 
solved ? 

Not, I answer, by the simple fact of the In- 
carnation. That Christ " came in the flesh, 57 
was indeed a proof of infinite condescension. 
Yet God had been manifest before. Though 
" no man hath seen the Father at any time," 
yet we are told that God " talked with Moses," 
and showed him a part of His glory ; and the 
angel of the Covenant so often spoken of in the 
old Testament, as God Himself, was doubtless 
but the borrowed human form, in which the 
second person in the Holy Trinity thus early 

chose to visit the world, into which as the child 

- 

of a virgin, he was afterwards to be born. 

But these advents, these temporary mani- 
festations of God on earth, did not, and could 
not, take away sin. Nor was it the holiness, 
the obedience, the perfect example, the divine 
teaching, or the instructive martyrdom, of the 
Son of God, which accomplished the great work 
left undone by the Law. 

To suppose that they could, or did, would be 
entirely to overlook the nature of this legal im- 
possibility. What the law could not effect, 
was, as we have already seen, the justification 
of those who had already broken it. And how 



243 



SERMON XL 



was this to be accomplished by example, or in* 
struction, or martyrdom r 

You may love and pity a criminal condemned 
by the laws, You may visit him in his gloomy 
cell. You may exhibit before him the purest 
morality, lou may inculcate upon his mind 
the wisest lessons of virtue. You may even 
illustrate to his view the power of truth, by 
dying under his prison walls a martyr to your 
principles. But does all this change his guilt? 
or alter the verdict: or mitigate the sentence : 
or unlock the doors of his prison r So far from 
it. that it has not even the remotest tendency to 
this end. And if such things had been all 
which Christ was able to otter or to do for us. 
we might still have exclaimed in fear and 
despair. "Who. then, can be saved : r 

But at this point of doubt and fear, there 
comes to the aid of our wondering minds, and 
to the joy of our despairing hearts, the great 
Scripture doctrine of the Atonement. 

That Christ died for our sins according to 
the Scriptures : that He bore those sins in his 
own body on the tree ; that by his blood He 
has made propitiation for us: that, in short. He 
is the great antetype of the sacrificial types, 
the substance of the shadows, of the old dis- 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 



249 



pensation, without which, they were but the 
signs of nothing, shadows without a substance ; 
all this, which the Bible teaches us with more 
repetition, perhaps, than it teaches anything else, 
and which the whole Church, with so few ex- 
ceptions, both in ancient and modern times, has 
relied upon as the very corner stone of Chris- 
tianity, shows us as plainly, as in our present 
imperfect state we can understand, how it was, 
that Christ did, what the law could not do. 

Here, too, we perceive the grand reason for 
the Incarnation ; that the nature which had 
sinned might also suffer. 

It was indeed, as an apostle tells us, for the 
suffering of death, that Christ became a little 
lower than the angels ; since an angelic nature 
could not have died. It was in the flesh, as 
our text assures us, that sin must be condemned. 
It was "in his own body" assumed for the very 
purpose, that he bore our sins. It was " upon 
the tree" that he must be lifted up, that he 
might draw men unto Him. 

Behold then, my hearers, the Lamb of God, 
who taketh away the sins of the world. Re- 
member that without the shedding of blood 
there could be no remission. Call to mind the 
apostle's declaration that it was impossible for 



250 



SERMON XI. 



the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin ; 
and be thankful, that, as the same apostle tells 
us, Christ by his own blood entered in once to 
the holy place, having obtained eternal redemp- 
tion for us. Can language be plainer ? 

And now let us next observe, with what 
strictness Jehovah guards the holy temple of 
human accountableness, where conscience sits 
enshrined. Lest any should say, " Let us con- 
tinue in sin that grace may abound ; 55 lest the 
sufficient and free Atonement of Christ, like the 
ocean in abundance, and like the atmosphere in 
gratuitousness, should operate as a bounty upon 
the transgression which it was designed in part 
to prevent, as well as to atone for; we find its 
offers universally coupled with certain requisi- 
tions binding upon those who would avail 
themselves of it. Let us hear the concluding 
words of our text, " that the righteousness of 
the Law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the spirit. 55 

We cannot gain a more distinct and compre- 
hensive view of the Scripture doctrine, respect- 
ing the way in which Christ's work is made 
available in individual cases, and respecting the 
possibility and danger of His having died, as to 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 251 

ourselves, in vain, than by a reference to the 
verses immediately following our text. 

" For they that are after the flesh do mind 
the things of the flesh ; but they that are after 
the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be 
carnally minded is death ; but to be spiritually 
minded is life and peace : because the carnal 
mind is enmity against God : for it is not sub- 
ject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. 
So then they that are in the flesh cannot please 
God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the 
Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in 
you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of 
Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in 
you, the body is dead because of sin ; but the 
Spirit is life because of righteousness. But if 
the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the 
dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from 
the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies 
by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. Therefore, 
brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live 
after the flesh. For if ye live after the flesh, 
ye shall die ; but if ye through the Spirit do 
mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. 
For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, 
they are the sons of God. For ye have not re- 
ceived the spirit of bondage again to fear ; but 



252 



SERMON XI. 



ye have received the Spirit of adoption, where- 
by we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself 
beareth witness with our spirit, that we are 
the children of God : and if children, then 
heirs ; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ ; 
if so be that we suffer with him, that we may 
be also glorified together. 55 

How entirely does all this both disprove the 
doctrine, and repel the cavil, that the death 
of Christ has provided salvation for all men, or 
for any irrespective of character. As a doc- 
trine, it has been held by few. As a cavil, it 
has been more often urged, than almost any 
other, against the claims of Evangelical religion. 
But the doctrine is no less unscriptural than 
the cavil is unjust. 

Those who believe in the atoning sacrifice of 
Christ, as the sinner's only ground of hope, 
consider it no more possible for a man to be 
saved without morality, than do those who ex- 
pect to be saved by morality ; while above and 
beyond the external and often heartless morality 
of this world, they find the Scriptures requiring 
a holy heart, a spiritual life, a godly conversa- 
tion, a likeness to Christ, in all who hope to be 
justified by his merits, and saved by his grace. 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 253 

And here it is important to notice one point 
of excellence in the Gospel, which is often 
overlooked. We have seen that one thing 
which the Law could not do, namely, to justify 
and save the transgressors, the Gospel has 
| done. 

There is another thing, which the Law was 
neither able nor designed to do, but which the 
Cross has accomplished. 

Its powerful motives, with the influences of 
the Divine Spirit which its agonies purchased, 
and the dying Saviour bequeathed, have power 
to sanctify as well as to justify. And while the 
Law, as we have already seen, had no power, 
either to prevent transgression, or to avert its 
consequences, the Gospel does both. 

From the influence as w 7 ell as the guilt of 
sin, the Cross can release the penitent and be- 
lieving. And though even under the Gospel, 
there is not a just man on earth, that doeth 
good and sinneth not, it is still true, that he 
who hath this hope, " purifieth himself." 

Thus the false and wicked suggestion, " Let 
us continue in sin that grace may abound," not 
only meets its hearty " God forbid," from the 
lips of every true Christian, but affords inter- 
nal and irresistible evidence, that the heart 
22 



254 



SERMON XI* 



which prompts it has never been baptized with 
the blood of Christ, and has never shared in 
the blessings of his atonement. 

" W r hen from the curse He sets us free, 

He makes our natures clean ; 
Nor would He send his Son, to be 

The minister of sin." 

The first reflection that arises from this sub- 
ject, has respect to the duty of self-examination. 
In furnishing a test by which we may learn 
whether we have yet any share in the salvation 
purchased by the blood of Christ, it strongly 
reminds us of the importance of using that 
test. 

Do we, my hearers, " walk after the Spirit ?" 
Have we spiritual thoughts and feelings ? Have 
we spiritual joys, and hopes, and fears r Is our 
conversation spiritual ? Have we any thing to 
do with a spiritual world, and with spiritual 
duties ? Have we any communion with God, 
who is a Spirit ? Or, are we carnally, that is, 
worldly, minded, walking after the flesh, and 
minding the things of the flesh ? 

These are the points, my hearers, on which 3 
as on so many hinges, the w T hole question of 
our union to Christ must turn. 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL* 



255 



It is not mere profession ; for to many of his 
professed disciples, Christ will one day say, 
" Depart from Me, I know you not." 

It is not morality merely ; for to one of the 
most moral men, according to his own uncon- 
tradicted statement, that ever lived, Christ said, 
" One thing thou lackest." 

To be spiritually minded is life and peace ; 
and, if any man have not the spirit of Christ, he 
is none of His. 

Again. If the Law cannot save us, none but 
Christ can. If what the Law^ could not do, 
could have been more cheaply or easily done, 
(it could not surely have been done at any 
greater expense,) then Christ had never thus 
accomplished it. There was no other Saviour. 
There remaineth no more sacrifice. That no 
imperfect obedience can justify and save man, 
the Bible clearly shows. That no one of us 
has ever rendered a perfect obedience, we need 
not the Bible to convince us. That there is 
no third method of pardon, is beyond a doubt. 
Consequently, unless Christ saves us, we are 
lost. 

My hearers, blot out the doctrine of re- 
demption by the blood of Christ, from the pages 
of the Bible, and you consign with ruthless 



256 



SERMON XI. 



hand, the entire race of sinful man to destruction. 
Deny that we may be justified by faith in his 
blood, and you teach, unconsciously, but inev- 
itably, the doctrine of universal damnation. 
Take away the atonement, and you may take 
the rest of the Bible. For its empty covers, 
would be, I would not say, as useful, but cer- 
tainly as consoling, as Sinai without Calvary ; 
as a Gospel without a Saviour. 

When you hold up before me these tables of 
testimony, on which are engraven by the finger 
of God the words of his holy and unchangeable 
Law, O point me with the other hand to the 
Cross on which was written with human hands, 
yet by the mind and will of God, that other 
word, " Jesus. " For what said the angel more 
than thirty years before ? " Thou shalt call 
his name Jesus, for he shall save his people 
from their sins. " 

Blessed word ! Thanks to the Heaven di- 
rected obstinacy of Pilate ; who though he 
honored not the Victim with the title of the 
Son of God, was yet not moved by the clamor 
of the Jews, to change the inscription. "What 
I have written," said he, U I have written." It 
shall not be forgotten. It shall stand written 



THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 257 

upon the memory of the world, and upon the 
heart of the Church, till Christ's second coming. 

What thanks do we owe to God, for this un- 
speakable gift, — the Gospel of Salvation. May 
it not become, to any who hear me, of none 
effect, through their unbelief. May God in His 
mercy forbid that any of us should add to the 
guilt of transgressing the Law, the greater and 
more irreparable sin of neglecting the Gospel. 

My highest wish will be accomplished, and 
my most fervent prayer respecting these dis- 
courses, answered if that Law whose several 
Statutes I have thus attempted to explain and 
apply, and by which we must all feel con- 
demned, shall be, to use again the expressive 
words of an apostle, " our Schoolmaster to 
bring us to Christ." 



THE END, 



347 7 7 



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